Dr. K.L.M. Wallace CD, BSc, DOS
11117-57 AVENUE
;EDMONTONt ALBERTA T6H QZ7,
Ex LIBRIS
UNI VERSITATI S
ALBERTAN SIS
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Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2016 with funding from
University of Alberta Libraries
https://archive.org/details/whencanadawasnewOOIock
The Landing of the Canadians in France, 1915.
WHEN CANADA
WAS NEW FRANCE
BY
GEORGE H. LOCKE
CHIEP LIBRARIAN OR THE
PUBLIC LIBRARY, TORONTO
Love of country is born
of a knowledge of its institutions,
its traditions and history
wherein are revealed
the lives of its people
and their heroic achievements.
WITH SEVEN
ILLUSTRATIONS
PUBLISHED AT THE END OR THE
GREAT WAR BY
TORONTO : J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD.
PARIS : J. M. DENT ET FILS
1920
Copyright, 1919, by
J. M. DENT & SONS
Published November, 1919
Second Printing, February, 1920
I UNIV^I^ LIBRARY I
| UNIVER3! I V OF ALDERTA f
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
Introduction 7
I. Cartier and the St. Lawrence . . 13
II. Champeain and the Great Lakes . . 25
III. JoeiET, Marquette and the River of a
Hundred Thousand Streams . . 40
IV. La SaeeE and the Greater New France 48
V. Radisson and the Great North West . 59
VI. Montcaem and the Fael of New France 72
VII. Pontiac and the Last Hope of Indian
Supremacy . .... 82
VIII. The Gray Gowns and the Beack . . 96
IX. The Iroquois and the Hurons . . Ill
X. The Coureur-des-bois and the Voyageur 126
XI. The Seignior and the Habitant . . 134
XII. Stories Which Ieeustrate References 143
in this Book.
XIII. Poems which Ieeustrate References 151
in this Book.
List of Illustrations
The Landing oe the Canadians in France, 1914
Frontispiece
PACING
PAGB
Seneca Hunter Group ------- 16
The Return of the Warriors ----- 34
Council of the Turtle Clan ----- 68
The Cayuga False Face Ceremony - 86
The Corn Harvest ------- 104
Typical Iroquois Industries ----- 122
INTRODUCTION.
The Great War has had a special meaning
for Canadians. Soldiers from our shores, citi-
zen-soldiers, have been landing on the northern
coast of France in tens of thousands, and passing
through the same seaport towns whence nearly
four hundred years ago men sailed forth to the
westward to discover a fabled land.
This country, discovered by the French and
colonized by them and by the English, this land
which was now French and now English as the
fortune of war changed in Europe as well as in
America, has become a nation, and when the
time of trial came and danger threatened the
ancestral homes in the two Motherlands, Canada
hesitated not a moment but offered her services
in the cause of freedom.
Canada has been fighting more truly perhaps
than any other nation in what we speak of as
“the common cause,” and it is to make clear
to ourselves as well as to others the great mean-
ing of this in the development of nationality in
our Dominion that this story of the two cen-
INTRODUCTION
turies when Canada was New France has been
told and in this form.
The early history of Canada is a history of
men, and if Canada is to become a great nation,
its future history will depend upon the develop-
ment of men who can and will inspire, guide
and lead us to the greater things.
This is not intended for children only, but
for the youth of every age, those who are young
enough to enjoy a story and who know not, or
know but dimly, our wonderful history during
the two hundred years of our country when its
history was bound up with that of the two great
empires of France and England, France of the
times of Henry of Navarre and of Richelieu,
England in the days of the Tudors and of the
Pitts.
The frontispiece of this little book illustrates
a dramatic incident in our history. The landing
of the Canadians at St. Nazaire in 1915 to help
Old France against the ruthless invader brings
to one’s mind the landing of a French exploring
expedition under Cartier nearly four hundred
years ago, when the flag of France was raised
high upon the cliff of Gaspe and the newly dis-
covered land was called New France. Our
thanks are due to the Canadian War Memorials
INTRODUCTION
Committee for permission to reproduce this pic-
ture.
To the kindness of Dr. John M. Clarke, the
Director of the New York State Museum, him-
self a contributor to the history of New France,
we are indebted for the great privilege of repro-
ducing the illustrations of the Iroquois Indian
Groups which form the Myron H. Clark Me-
morial in the Museum at Albany. They portray
the aboriginal activities of the Confederacy of
the Six Nations.
GEORGE H. LOCKE.
WHEN CANADA WAS
NEW FRANCE
OLD FRANCE.
Le Gaulois semble au saule verdissant :
Plus on le coupe et plus il est naissant,
Et rejetonne en branches davantage,
Prenant vigueur de son propre dommage.
— Ronsard.
The Gaul is like the verdant willow-bush :
The more you prune, the more it’s lithe and lush,
Shooting a crown of branchy twigs all round,
And draws new life and vigour from a wound.
CHAPTER I.
CARTIER AND THE ST. LAWRENCE
“He told them of the river, whose mighty current gave
Its freshness for a hundred leagues to ocean’s briny
wave ;
He told them of the glorious scene presented to his
sight
What time he reared the cross and crown on Hoche-
laga’s height,
And of the fortress cliff that keeps of Canada the key,
And they welcomed back Jacques Cartier from his
perils over sea.”
— Hon. T. D’Arcy McGee.
Almost four hundred years ago, when bluff
King Hal ruled over Merry England and Francis
over Sunny France, there were strange stories
told in the ports of the west of England and
the north of France of lands away to the
Westward. The voyage of Columbus was
the talk of Europe, and while the Spaniards were
joyfully telling how he had come to the edge of
a great new world which would give them a new
route to the marvellous East with all its trea-
sures, John Cabot, of the port of Bristol, the
pioneer of English adventurers, sailed off to the
west and it is likely saw the continent itself as
soon as did Columbus. Both Columbus and
13
14 CARTIER AND THE ST. EAWRENCE
Cabot discovered islands first, Columbus on his
way to the west, Cabot after he had passed
along the coast.
So, from the northern country of England,
as well as from the southern land of Spain, the
men of the seaports talked of nothing so much
as the great land over the sea. It was but
natural that the hardy mariners of the northern
French ports should join in the search, and for
nearly half a century vessels manned by the
more adventurous spirits visited the cod banks
of Newfoundland and brought back cargoes
of fish.
One can picture the interest that would be
aroused in a port like Bristol in England or St.
Malo or Dieppe in France, when a vessel came
back to harbour after an absence of many
months and the mariners spun their tales of
adventure to an eager audience. It was in this
kind of atmosphere, hearing these stories and
wishing that he would grow old quickly so
that he too could go and see these lands, that
Jacques Cartier grew up. He was a clever and
ambitious boy and when he became a master
mariner had made such a reputation that the
King sent for him to discuss the possibility of
finding an opening in the coast of America in
the vicinity of Newfoundland, which was then
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 15
thought to be but a projection of the eastern
coast of Asia. There is no doubt that Cartier
had made trips to the fishing banks many times
in company with his fellow fishermen of Brittany,
whose enterprise is preserved to us in the name
of Cape Breton.
King Francis was anxious that France should
have a share in the great discoveries that so far
had been made by England and by Spain.
Indeed, the whole land had been claimed by
the King of Spain and Francis is said to have
been so annoyed by this statement that he
exclaimed :
“ I should like to see the clause in our father
Adam’s will which bequeathed to him this fine
heritage.”
It was on an April day in 1534 that Cartier
set sail in two ships of 60 tons each to find what
was beyond the shores known to the sailors,
and in the hope that he would be able to pene-
trate to India and the treasures of the East by
a shorter route. On his way out, and in what
are known now as the Straits of Belle Isle, he
passed a great ship which had sailed from
Rochelle, thus proving that those straits and
the adjacent waters were known to the French
mariners.
Cartier and his ships kept on westward, and
antlers and bones were used for tool material, the jaws for° scrapers,
the hoofs for ornaments and the hair for stuffing cushions. The
group also faithfully represents the various costumes ornamented
with hair embroidery.
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SENECA HUNTER GROUP
This group represents a Seneca family clustered about the door-
yard of their hunting lodge, each individual being engaged in his
allotted duties. The old father, who no longer goes to war (indicated
Seneca Hunter Group.
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 19
we can imagine his feelings when they passed
from the cold straits where doubtless he had
seen icebergs, into a part of what is now the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, where the heat of July
was so oppressive that he called it the Bay of
Chaleur (heat), a name preserved to this day.
On these shores they found gooseberries, straw-
berries, raspberries and roses growing in abund-
ance and the rivers were full of salmon. They
reached what we call Gaspe on July 24th, and
at once raised a great cross with a shield on
which were the lilies of France and “Vive le
Roi de France.”
The Indians (for Cartier thought and hoped
that he was on the road to India) were friendly,
and Cartier persuaded two sons of the chief to
go back to France with him. Being unprovided
for a longer stay and fearful of the stormy
weather, he set sail for home and entered the
harbour of St. Malo early in September.
For a person of his imagination and daring
and with the two Indian princes to show to the
court of France, there were no difficulties in
getting ready an expedition for the next year,
and in July, 1535, he left St. Malo with three
small vessels. One can picture the excite-
ment in that seaport town when the vessels
weighed anchor and stood out to sea, vessels
20 CARTIER AND THE ST. LAWRENCE
commissioned by the King and commanded by
a son of St. Malo who had proved his worth
already, and who had on board the evidence of
his discoveries in the persons of the Indian
princes now on their way home.
In August he was in the great Gulf, and
aided by the knowledge of these princes,
sailed boldly on until he saw the banks drawing
together and realized that he was going out
of the gulf into a great river. They stopped at
the narrows where Quebec now stands and met
the Indian chief, Donnaconna, in his village of
Stadacona, which in the language of the Huron-
Iroquois, means “wing,” the formation of land
between the St. Lawrence and St. Charles rivers.
This chief they saluted as the Lord of Canada,
the chief of the village or collection of huts.
This is the first time we meet the word
“Canada,” a collection of huts, for Cartier had
taken possession of the country as New France.
Nearly four hundred years afterwards, from
the same port went forth great vessels bearing
tens of thousands of troops from Canada to
help old France against the ruthless invader.*
Cartier was told of the great river which
stretched on for miles and that after many days’
* Colonel George Nasmith in his book, "On the Fringe of the
Great Fight.” tells of the departure of this first contingent of the
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 21
journey there was a large town. He gave the
river the name “St. Lawrence,” and up it he
made his way, astonished at the beauty and
grandeur of the ever-changing scene. And in
those days it must have been wonderful, for
he tells us that he was impressed with the great
trees on the banks, the oak, the walnut, birch
and willow and with the vines heavy with grapes.
It was September, and even to this day with
so many of those features gone, it would be
difficult anywhere to find a more impressive
and beautiful journey than from the ancient
Quebec to the almost as ancient Montreal,
when autumn tints the trees.
It was in the last days of this autumn month
that he entered the expansion of the river, which
is now called Lac St. Pierre, so named nearly
a century afterwards by Champlain and known
to many to-day by Drummond’s famous poem.*
Canadian Expeditionary Force in the autumn of 1914 within six
weeks of the outbreak of the Great War.
“Imperceptibly the pier and the lights of the city receded and
we steamed down the mighty St. Lawrence to our trysting place
on the sea. The second morning afterwards we woke to find our-
selves riding quietly at anchor in the sunny harbour of Gaspe with
all the other transports about us, together with four long grey
gunboats, our escort upon the road to our great adventure
Never before had there been gathered together a fleet of transports
of such magnitude — a fleet consisting of 33 transports carrying
33,000 men, 7,000 horses, and all the motors, wagons, and equip-
ment necessary to place in the field not only a complete infantry
division and a cavalry brigade, but in addition to provide for the
necessary reserves.”
*“The Wreck of the Julie Plante” :
“On wan dark night on Lac St. Pierre,” etc.
22 CARTIER AND THE ST. LAWRENCE
Landing on October 2nd he found the well-
built town of Hochelaga, and was welcomed by
the inhabitants, the first white man they had
ever seen. The reception must have been
impressive to both parties, and was made still
more so by the Indians taking Cartier up on
the great hill to which he gave the name of
Mount Royal, and from which he looked over
fields of maize and beans and peas and wild
fruits, with the silver river winding its way
among the beautiful foliage of the autumn, and
away in the distance the faint outline of what
now are known as the Adirondacks of New
York State and the Green Mountains of
Vermont. His men were full of wonder and it
is interesting to read that what attracted them
most was “a great pile of rats, which live in
the water and are as large as rabbits and are
wonderfully good to eat.”*
He returned to Quebec, where he built huts
in which to spend the winter. Unaccustomed
to so severe a climate and not well provisioned,
disease broke out and so many of his men died
that when spring came and he set sail for France
he had to abandon one of his vessels, ‘‘La
Petite Hermine.”
* These are known to us as muskrats, the Algonquin name being
mooskovesson, from which we get the name of the fur, musquash.
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 23
Cartier had a story worth telling. Whereas
Columbus had touched the New World and
Cabot had sailed along its shores, Cartier had
penetrated a thousand miles into the continent
— “Up the greatest river without comparison
that is known to have ever been seen,” as
Cartier told the King, and when he stood on
Mount Royal on that October day he was the
only white man in all that country now known
as Canada and the United States of America.
It makes one think of another great adventurer
who, at almost the same time, upon the same
continent, is depicted as standing “ silent upon
a peak in Darien.”*
This was Cortez of Spain and so we have the
French and the Spanish in the North American
continent.
To confirm his story and to illustrate the
transfer of the land to France, Cartier took
back with him Donnaconna and two other
chiefs who were presented to the King. They
really were kidnapped, and sad to tell they did
not live to return to their own land.
When Cartier reached France there were
serious political troubles which prevented the
authorities from acting at once, and so it was
not until 1538 that Francis took up the question
Keats : “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer. :
24 CARTIER AND THE ST. LAWRENCE
of New France overseas. He organized an
expedition of which Lord Roberval was to be
chief and Cartier captain- general, and with a
crew recruited mainly from the prisons Cartier
left St. Malo in 1541, sailed up the St. Lawrence,
explored the rapids (afterwards known as La
Chine), spent a miserable winter and returned
to St. Malo a disappointed man. The Indians
had lost faith in him, for when they welcomed
him and asked for their chiefs, whose loss they
had felt keenly, Cartier told them that the
chiefs had stayed in France, whereas they had
died. Superseded at home by political
favourites, and distrusted in New France by
the natives, Cartier retired from the sea, his
name passes from history, and the first chapter
of the history of New France comes to an end.
CHAPTER II.
CHAMPLAIN.
“There are few chapters in history so full of romantic
interest, so compelling in their demands for sympathy
and admiration, as the record of the century and a half
that began with the wooden fortress of Champlain
under the bluff at Quebec, and ended with the fall of
Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham.”
— Hon. Euhu Root.
Champlain and the Great Lakes.
On the Bay of Biscay, on the west coast of
France, and not very far from Rochelle, there
is a small village now some miles from the sea,
but which in the days of Cartier and for some
years after was a flourishing seaport. This is
called Brouage, and is almost a deserted village
to-day, the sea having receded and the railway
passed it by. The great salt marshes are still
there to remind one of the time when cargoes
of salt were shipped from this harbour, and
where ships, then considered great, found safe
anchorage.
In this seaport, with its face to the great
mysterious Western land, young Samuel de
Champlain, son of a sea captain, grew up during
25
26 CHAMPLAIN AND THE GREAT LAKES
the stirring times of civil war in France. When
a boy of nine* his city was captured by
Henry of Navarre, who, after years of struggle,
during which were many mighty deeds of valour,
finally overcame his enemies, entered Paris in
triumph, and was crowned King of France.
Indeed, the struggle was so long that Champlain
grew up sufficiently to be accounted a gallant
officer in Henry’s army.
When peace was declared and the country had
settled down, Champlain in his love for adven-
ture entered the service of the King of Spain,
and made trips to the West Indies, going inland
in America even to the city of Mexico.
On his return he made a report to the King
of France, concerning this Western land, in the
hope that his own country might once more
send expeditions of discovery. In this report
he says : “One might judge if the territory
four leagues in extent, lying between Panama
and the river were cut through, he could pass
from the South Sea to that on the other side,
and thus shorten the route by more than fifteen
*There is in the museum of the Chateau de Ramezay in Montreal
a part of the rock that formed the key stone of the arch over the
doorway (which is reproduced) of the house, in which it is said
Champlain was born. This was presented by President J. H.
Finley, of the University of the State of New York, who visited
Brouage when writing his famous book, “The French in the Heart
of America.”
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 27
hundred leagues. From Panama to Magellan
would make an island and from Panama to the
Newlands (Newfoundland) would make another,
so that the whole of America would be in two
islands.”
Three hundred years afterwards this was
done, and by the people of a country then
undiscovered, and supplies from the Pacific
Coast of that great nation passed through that
canal to help the cause of the France which
Champlain loved and served so well.
During the years of civil strife in France,
the exploration of the Western world was
being pushed forward by the merchant adven-
turers of England, and especially of Spain.
Spies from the court of Spain watched every
port and sent home the news of prospective
sailings so that these rivals might be inter-
cepted and America be preserved for Spain.
But now that peace was established enter-
prising mariners of the northern seaports of
France remembered the expeditions of Cartier,
and so the governor of Dieppe induced Cham-
plain to undertake a voyage to New France.
They left that port in March, 1603, and after
coasting along the shores of Newfoundland,
Anticosti and Cape Breton, sailed up the St.
Lawrence and anchored at Tadoussac at the
28 CHAMPLAIN AND THE GREAT LAKES
mouth of the Saguenay. Thence Champlain
made a journey up the great river to Hochelaga,
which in Cartier’s time was a flourishing town.
Now all was deserted and nothing remained of
what had been a great Indian community.
Gathering up what furs they could, Champlain
and his party sailed for home, which they
reached in September.
This was a journey of inspection, spying out
the land, and the King was so impressed by
Champlain’s account that he gave his patronage
to a larger expedition. This was under the
command of Sieur de Monts, a nobleman, with
Champlain as the King’s geographer, and was
sent out in the hope that a colony might be
established, and so actual possession of New
France might be maintained against European
nations who were claiming parts of the New
World.
De Monts became the first Lieutenant-
Governor of New France, and with nobles,
soldiers, priests, and peasants, about 120 in all,
his little fleet discovered and entered the har-
bour and river of St. John on the 24th of June,
1604, exactly to the day one hundred and seven
years after the discovery of Newfoundland by
Cabot ; and there on the island of St. Croix
(Holy Cross) established a colony, the only
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 29
settlement of Europeans north of Florida. It
was an exceptionally severe winter and the
colonists suffered almost as much as Cartier’s
men many years before at Quebec.
In the spring Champlain set out to find
some place for the settlement which might have
a more congenial climate. Although he went
south and passed the islands at the mouth of
what is now the harbour of Portland, Maine,
and even entered the harbour of Boston, he
returned to Port Royal in Nova Scotia, the
situation of which had appealed to him, and
there the colony moved.
It was a prosperous settlement, and it is of
interest in these days of grain growing, hydro-
power development and ship building in Canada
to know that these settlers raised the first wheat
grown in America ; here was used the first
wheel to turn a millstone upon this continent ;
and in this harbour in 1606 the first Canadian
vessel was built.
The position on the sea, with fertile soil
and great forests near by, was very attractive,
and perhaps is best described by Longfellow
centuries afterwards :
“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and
the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct
in the twilight,
30 CHAMPLAIN AND THE GREAT LAKES
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their
bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep voiced neigh-
boring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of
the forest.”
To-day in its loneliness it reminds one of Brouage
and it is difficult to think that it has been the
most besieged city in America.
But our great interest begins when Champ-
lain came back from France in 1608 after a
year’s absence from the colony, for then he
determined to press inland and re-assert the
sovereignty claimed for France by Cartier.
The bold headland where Cartier had spent the
winter had attracted his attention upon his
previous voyage, and so he founded there in
1608 a town, really the capital of New France,
and to it he gave the native Algonquin name,
“Quebec,” which means “the narrowing of the
stream.”
In the following year he went up the St.
Lawrence, and finding a party of Huron and
Algonquin Indians about to set out on an
expedition against their great enemy, the Iro-
quois, who were encroaching upon Algonquin
territory near what is now Lake Champlain, he
joined with them, thinking thereby to establish
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 31
friendly and profitable relations with such
powerful tribes. The result was that he made
the fighting Iroquois the everlasting and un-
relenting enemies, not only of himself but of
France.
This was one of the great fights of history,
full of meaning in the after years of Canadian
life. When the Algonquins came within fight-
ing distance of their adversaries they opened
ranks, and Champlain, steel armour on breast
and thighs, a plumed helmet on his head, a
sword at his side, and a musket in his hands,
stepped out to the front, and for the first time
the Indians saw the death-dealing firearms of
the white man.*
In his own words :
“I looked at them and they looked at me.
When I saw them getting ready to shoot their
arrows at us, I levelled my arquebus which I
had loaded with four balls and aimed straight
at one of the chiefs. The shot brought down
two and wounded another.”
This day of fateful beginnings was two
months before Hudson discovered the river that
* Three hundred years afterwards this battle scene was repro -
duced on Take Champlain by descendants of the Iroquois, and this
illustration of the great matters which are kindled by little fires
was portrayed by the Indians with a zest that drew great audiences
and held them spellbound.
32 CHAMPLAIN AND THE GREAT LAKES
bears his name and eleven years before the
Pilgrim Fathers landed upon the stern and
rock-bound coast of America. One of our own
poets, Bliss Carman, pictures the setting out
of the expedition :
“On such a day three hundred years ago
By toilsome trails, and slow,
But with the adventurer’s spirit all aflame
The great discoverer came
Finding another Indies that he guessed
To reward his darling quest
And fill the wonder-volume of Romance,
The sailor of Little Brouage, the founder of New
France,
Sturdy, sagacious, plain
Samuel de Champlain.”
During the next few years Champlain crossed
the sea almost annually and arranged for the
development of the fur trade, for which he
established a post on the site of the ancient
Hochelaga and where Montreal now stands.
Then he resumed his search for the great
“Western Sea” which lured on these early
adventurers, or some outlet through the great
continent to the fabled land beyond; and in
1613 he followed up the waterway of the St.
Lawrence by going up the Ottawa beyond where
now is the capital of the Dominion of Canada.
His journey really began when he left the end
of the island of Montreal at the confluence of
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 33
the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa, where St.
Anne de Bellevue now stands and where, many
years after, Tom Moore, the famous Irish poet,
lived for a short time and wrote the Canadian
Boat Song .*
He soon came back, his information having
proved unreliable, and he returned to France to
make his report on the fur trade and the state
of the country. He set sail again in 1615 for
New France, having with him four Franciscan
Fathers called Recollet friars from the convent
in Brouage, who were anxious to convert to
Christianity the savages of this great new
world of which Champlain had told them.
He stayed but a short time at Quebec as he
wished to follow up a party of Huron and
Algonquin Indians who had gone up the Ottawa
to gather the tribes for a raid against the Iro-
quois. With them went Father Le Caron,
one of the Recollets who had come out from
Brouage with Champlain.
Accompanied by Etienne Brule, his inter-
preter, a brave and skilful woodsman, Cham-
plain’s party went up the Ottawa, crossed over
*“ Faintly as tolls the evening chime.
Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time,
Soon as the woods on shore look dim.
We’ll sing at St. Ann’s our parting hymn.
Row, brothers, row! the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near, and the daylight’s past.”
The purpose of this group is to illustrate (1) the treatment of
prisoners, (2) the authority of the Iroquois woman, (3) the difference
between the Mohawks and the Hudson river Mahikans, (4) an
Iroquois village with its stockade wall, (5) a typical Mohawk valley
landscape in Indian times.
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The Return of the Warriors.
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 37
the divide from the Upper Ottawa and launched
their canoes on Lake Nipissing. Thence they
paddled down the French River into Lake
Huron. One can imagine the joy of Champlain
when he saw this great body of water stretching
away beyond his vision and which he christened
Mer Douce (Fresh Water Sea). This was the
first of the Great Lakes to be discovered by a
white man, and Champlain, with Le Caron
and Brule, were the first white men to sail on its
waters.
Down the shore they went for more than a
hundred miles until the Indians came to the
outlet of a well-known trail leading into the
heart of the territory of the Hurons, to the
palisaded town of Otoucha. This part of the
country had many permanent Indian villages
whose inhabitants were more agricultural than
those in the east, and Champlain was greatly
impressed with the fields of maize and pumpkins
and sun flowers. Here he found Le Caron,
who had preceded him on the journey, and on
August 12th, 1615, the first mass, the first
religious service in what was afterwards known
as Upper Canada, was celebrated in what is
now the township of Tiny, near Penetanguishene,
in the county of Simcoe. This event was com-
memorated three hundred years later by the
38 CHAMPLAIN AND THE GREAT LAKES
Archbishop of Toronto, who celebrated mass
as nearly as possible on the same spot, and to
mark which a monument has been erected.
The Indians gathered up their warriors and
started southward. When the expedition reached
Lake Simcoe, Brule left Champlain that he
might go directly south and persuade an Indian
tribe who lived in that part of the country west
and south of where Buffalo now stands, to join
them against the Iroquois. Brule paddled up
the Holland river, crossed over the height of
land and thence down the Humber river until
he came to its mouth where the city of Toronto
now stands. He was the first white man who
saw Lake Ontario ; and this was some five
years before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.
Champlain in the meantime crossed Lake
Simcoe, portaged to Balsam Lake, thence
through the Otonabee River, Rice Lake, and
the Trent River, into Lake Ontario, which he
too saw for the first time, and with his Huron
companions crossed over to the country of the
Iroquois. The raid was a failure, and Cham-
plain, himself wounded, returned with the
retreating Hurons and spent the winter with
them in Huronia on the Georgian Bay.
The remaining years of Champlain’s life
were spent in trying to build up this little
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 39
colony* in a vast country and reconciling the
conflicting elements in it. The most important
event was the capture of Quebec in 1629 by an
English fleet under Sir David Kirke, a descendant
of French Huguenots who had taken refuge in
England. Those were times when news travelled
slowly, and much to their mutual surprise it
was found that a peace had already been signed
between England and France, and so Quebec
was restored to France in 1632 and Champlain,
who had been taken to England as a prisoner,
was released and restored to his governorship.
But his spirit was failing, and on Christmas
Day, 1635, one hundred years after Cartier
had first sailed up to the great rock at the
narrowing of the stream, this brave soldier,
resourceful general, and true gentleman, passed
away in the country which he loved and in the
city he had founded.
* When Quebec was taken in 1629 the white population in that
city was only 60, and in the whole of Canada, less than 100, whereas
the English colony of Virginia had more than 4,000 souls.
CHAPTER III.
JOLIET, MARQUETTE AND THE RIVER OF A
HUNDRED THOUSAND STREAMS.
“The first French followers of the river courses
were devotees of a religion for the salvation of others,
bearers of advancing banners for the glory of France,
and lovers of nature and adventure.”
— President J. H. Fineey.
Joliet and Marquette.
Frontenac landed at Quebec in 1672 as
governor of New France, full of plans for the
development of the country, the extension of
its boundaries, and the exploration of “the
fabled West that is charted dim but certain in
the volume of the breast,” as our own Bliss
Carman phrases it. He found among the
coureurs des bois (runners of the woods) a
native Canadian, Louis Joliet, the son of a
wagon-maker in Quebec, a man reputed to be
courageous, enterprising, of good nature and
endowed with common sense. Him he com-
missioned to go up to Sault Ste. Marie and
thence explore for the great South Sea. This
40
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 41
was an exceedingly wise choice and due to
the advice of the Intendant, M. Talon, a very
able man, who knew of Joliet’s previous exploits.
Some three years previously the governor
of the time, Courcelles, sent Joliet to learn the
truth about the reputed copper deposits on
Lake Superior. He went by the great highway
of the Ottawa river, Lake Nipissing and French
River to Georgian Bay, and thence to the Sault.
On his return he went down Lake Huron from
the Sault through what we now call St. Clair
and Detroit, and then along the north shore of
Lake Erie and up the Grand River. The reason
for leaving the lake at this point was the fear
of his Indian guide for the warlike tribes at the
end of the lake.
Joliet was the first white man known to
have passed through Lake Erie and this lake
was the last of the Great Lakes to be discovered.
Leaving the Grand River he was making his
way eastward when in an Indian village in
what is now known as the Beverley Swamp,
near the present city of Galt, he met La Salle,
Galinee and his Sulpician companion, Father
Dollier. La Salle, greatly impressed by the
dashing Joliet, who was much more to his
taste than his priestly companions, turned
back with him.
42
JOLIET AND MARQUETTE
It was to this seasoned explorer that the
commission was given and he left for the Sault,
near which he was told he would find Father
Marquette, who would be his companion. Mar-
quette was of a noble family of Laon, a city of
Northern France, associated with nearly all the
epoch-making incidents in the history of France,
and which has been one of the great centres of
fighting on the Western Front in the Great
War of to-day. His mother was Rose de la
Salle of Rheims. Marquette had been in the
country about five years, and after two years
of training in the mission at Three Rivers, had
been sent to the remnants of the Huron nation
driven north-westward by the Iroquois, until
near the western end of Lake Superior they
established themselves in a village where they
hoped to be far enough away from their great
enemy to recover themselves. Hither in the
summer came wandering Indians of a tribe
called the Illinois, who told Marquette of the
great river which flowed through their country,
of the fertile lands, and how glad they all would
be if he would visit them. After the village
was broken up by the Sioux Indians, the Hurons
determined to go back to more familiar haunts
and settled at Michillimackinac, fifty miles to
the south-west of the Sault. Marquette ac-
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 43
companied them and there he was found by
Joliet.
They spent the winter making their plans for
the journey, and in May, 1673, they started
westwards with their party of Frenchmen and
Indians, through Lake Michigan to Green Bay.
Thence up the bay they went and up the Fox
River to its source. A short portage over a
narrow strip of prairie and they dropped their
canoes into water flowing southwards, now the
Wisconsin River, and after about 40 leagues
they glided out into the great river, the Mis-
sissippi, first christened by a religious name,
then called by a statesman’s name and finally
back to its Indian name, with the significant
meaning of “great water.”*
Down they floated through the land of the
buffalo and the wild turkey, until seeing upon
the bank traces of men, they landed and came
to the villages of the Indian tribe who had
invited Marquette to visit them. The Black
Gown, the distinctive garb of the Jesuit brother-
hood, was at once recognized and here they
stayed for some days, exchanging gifts and
courtesies and making enquiries about the
further reaches of the river.
Before leaving these friendly Indian villages
* River of the Holy Ghost, Colbert, and finally Mississippi.
44 JOLIET AND MARQUETTE
the Illinois Indians gave them a calumet, or
pipe of peace, as a safeguard for them in their
passage through hostile savages, probably just
to show to the savages by using their own sign
that they were coming in friendship. The
calumet used by these Indians was made of a
bowl of red stone with a long stick as a stem.
This stick was covered along its whole length
with heads of birds all coloured like flame, while
a bunch of red feathers shaped like a great fan
adorned the middle of the stick.
Southwards again they went as far as the
Arkansas, where, fearing the Spaniards, who
were in that part of the country, they turned
northwards, and following the advice of the
Indians, they entered the Illinois River. Mar-
quette was greatly impressed with the fertility
of that wonderful valley, and well he might be,
for his experience hitherto in New France had
not been in very fertile regions. “ I have seen,”
said he, “nothing like this river for the fertility
of the land, its prairies, woods, wild cattle, stag,
deer, wild cats, bustards, swans, ducks, parrots
and even beaver, its many little lakes and
rivers.”
On that river, in the great Indian village of
Kaskaskia, seven miles below the present city
of Ottawa, Illinois, Marquette was so kindly
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 45
treated that he promised to return to them as
soon as he could. Following up one of the
branches of the river they portaged across only
about 1,000 paces and put their canoes into a
little stream that emptied into Lake Michigan.
That portage is where stands to-day the city
of Chicago, the great city of the State called
after the Indians for whom Marquette had made
the journey. Along the shore they went, across
the portage at Sturgeon Bay, and at the end of
September reached the mission at Green Bay,
where they spent the winter.
Early in the spring they separated, Mar-
quette to return to his mission to recruit his
strength that he might redeem his promise to
his Indian friends at Kaskaskia, Joliet to report
to Frontenac the result of his voyage. Unfor-
tunately, Joliet’s canoe was upset in the Lachine
rapids and all his papers, including the map of
the discovered region, were lost. In his report
he said, with the insight of the prophet : “We
could easily go to Florida in a ship, and with
very easy navigation. It would only be neces-
sary to make a canal by cutting through but
half a league of prairie to pass from the foot of
the lake of the Illinois (Michigan) to the River
St. Louis (Des Plaines),” — and we have lived to
see that done in the great sanitary and ship
46
JOLIET AND MARQUETTE
canal connecting the Chicago River with the
Des Plaines River at the present city of Joliet.
Joliet held minor positions until 1680, when he
was granted fishing rights in the lower St.
Lawrence and later the island of Anticosti was
included. But in 1690 the English invasion
under Phips destroyed his establishment and
ten years later he died in poverty.
Marquette, weak in body but with a giant
spirit, was preparing himself to fulfil his promise
and in the fall of the next year, 1674, he started
for Kaskaskia. Bad weather and his physical
weakness made him halt so many times that it
was April before he reached the village. Here
he was welcomed as an angel from heaven, and
on the Easter Sunday, before an altar erected
on the prairie at the edge of the great wood, he
preached to thousands of the Indians as they
squatted in a semi-circle, chiefs, young men,
women and children, to hear the impressive
words of the black-robed missionary.
Leaving them that he might get treatment
for his ailment and promising that he never
would forget them, he started for home, but he
succumbed on the banks of the Great Lake on
May 18th, 1675. In compliance with his re-
quest, he was buried there, but a year later the
Ottawa Indians, finding the grave, opened it,
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 47
and took the remains to St. Ignace in a great
procession of canoes and, with solemn cere-
monies, buried under the chapel the great priest.
Early in the next century the chapel was des-
troyed by fire. In 1877 the remains of a burned
building were discovered at the site of the old
mission, and buried in the ruins still wrapped
in birch bark the ashes of this great man.
Small wonder it is that his name lives
throughout that great fertile valley, drained by
the river of a hundred thousand streams, the
man of courage, kindliness of heart and speech,
of unselfish devotion and high ideals, a fitting
hero for a land that becoming fabulously rich
in material wealth needs the inspiration of the
life of the simple, zealous priest who put the
good of others above his own pleasure and
comfort.
CHAPTER IV.
LA SALLE AND THE GREATER NEW FRANCE.
“The fertile plains of Texas, the vast basin of the
Mississippi from its frozen springs to the sultry borders
of the gulf ; from the wooded ridges of the Alleghanies
to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains, — a region
of savannas and forests, sun-cracked deserts and grassy
prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a
thousand warlike tribes.”
— Parkman.
La Salle and the Greater New France.
With the exception of Champlain, the most
romantic figure in the history of New France is
that of La Salle, the young adventurer from
Rouen. He landed at Quebec in 1666, the same
year as Marquette, and went at once to Montreal
where he had relatives among the Sulpician
order of priests, to whom most of the island of
Montreal belonged. Here he purchased from
them an estate or seigniory, as it was called.
This was but a few miles west of Montreal, and
was called in derision by his friends “La Chine,”
having reference to La Salle’s dream of finding
a road to China by following westward.
In preparation for his explorations he settled
48
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 49
down to acquaint himself with the Indian lan-
guages, and hearing from some Seneca Indians
that there was a great river called the Ohio,
which he thought might lead him to the great
Western Sea, he joined the expedition of Galinee
and Father D oilier, the Sulpician, who were
setting out to establish a mission in the Far
West. With nine canoes and twenty-one men
they skirted the eastern and southern shores of
Lake Ontario, and about the middle of Septem-
ber reached the mouth of a river which Galinee
describes : “We discovered a river one-eighth
of a league wide and extremely rapid.” The
Indians told them of a great cataract up this
river which was “higher than the highest pine
trees,” and indeed he tells us he could hear the
roar. But they had a set purpose and pressed
on their way, thus losing the opportunity to be
the first white men to visit the Falls of Niagara.
Indeed this is the first description of the river
by any one who is known to have reached it.
They passed on to Burlington Bay and
leaving it about where Hamilton now stands,
they struck across the country, and on the 24th
of September, in an Indian village in what is
known as the Beverley Swamp, near the present
city of Galt, they met Joliet returning from his
search for the copper mines on Lake Superior.
50 LA SALLE AND GREATER NEW FRANCE
La Salle was so attracted by Joliet, a kindred
adventurer in spirit, that he turned back and
left Dollier and Galinee to go on to the West,
guided as to their course by the advice of Joliet,
who told them of the Pottawatomies, a tribe of
Indians to whom no missionary had yet come.
They went down the Grand River and a's the
season was far advanced, they built a shelter
on the lake shore near where Port Dover now
stands, erected a cross and took formal pos-
session of the Lake Erie country in the name of
Louis the Magnificent.*
Here they spent the winter and are enthu-
siastic in their praise of the mildness of the
climate and the luscious autumn fruit. This is
of great interest to many of us who to-day look
upon that county (Norfolk) as one of the
greatest fruit centres of the province of Ontario.
La Salle returned east, and we know that
during the next few years he was with Frontenac,
* The pomp and splendour of the armies of Louis XIV. was
worthy of a prince in a fairy tale. Every campaign ended in a sort
of royal pageant ; coaches of crystal and gold, horses draped in
cloth of gold, courtiers and conquerors dazzling with diamonds,
ladies all silks and plumes and laces.
He built Versailles where two hundred years afterwards the
Conference following the Great War of 1914-18 met to settle the
terms of peace— “a palace such as the world had never seen, glitter-
ing with mirrors and gold, paved and lined with precious marbles,
decorated with paintings representing the battles and triumphs of
the great monarch and looking over an immense park peopled with
bronze and marble statues and reflected in vast sheets of water
where lovely fountains played.” — Ducpaux.
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 51
and doubtless made many exploration trips.
But in 1675 he received from the French Govern-
ment a grant on Lake Ontario similar to the
seigniory at La Chine, and so at Cataraqui, where
Kingston now stands, he built a fort to control
the trade coming east and to prevent it from
going to the English colony in New York.
This he called “Fort Frontenac.” He was
raised to the nobility and was given a com-
mission in 1678 to discover the “Western part
of New France” and “to construct forts in the
places you may think necessary.” This meant
that he would seek out the mouth of the great
Mississippi and erect a chain of forts which
would connect and hold for France the country
from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the
mouth of the Mississippi.
Here was the great chance for which this
adventurous man had longed and for which he
had toiled, and so in November of that year he
began to gather men and material for the great
project. He threw himself into this work with
energy and was backed up by Frontenac, whose
policy had ever been the extension of the
boundaries of New France. Indeed, Frontenac
had advised the Home Government as early as
1673 that a fort at the mouth of the Niagara
River and a vessel on Lake Erie would enable
52 LA SALLE AND GREATER NEW FRANCE
the French to command the Great Lakes.
Like many other Home Governments when
urged to progressive measures, Colbert, the
Colonial Minister, advised caution.*
When La Salle arrived from Rochelle with
these wonderfully indefinite powers these two
men saw great possibilities and went to work at
once. Ship carpenters, blacksmiths, and other
artisans were gathered at the Niagara River,
and while a fort was being built at the mouth
of the river to cut off the trade of the English,
a store house was erected below the Falls near
where Lewiston now stands, and a shipyard
was planned above the Falls, where a large
boat was to be built for the great western
expedition. This was the work of La Salle’s
lieutenant, Henry Tonty. With La Salle was
a Recollet priest, Father Hennepin, and to him
we owe our first written account of Niagara Falls.
After many disappointments, the Griffon,
named after Frontenac’s armorial bearing, was
* Colbert had troubles of his own in trying to provide money
for the extravagances of his king, Louis XIV. Colbert was the son
of a merchant of Rheims, a hard-working, economical minister, a
hater of waste and profusion. He was a marvellous administrator ;
in ten years he doubled the king’s revenues. But his factories and
model farms, his canals and his colonies, his fleet, his finance could
not bring money in as fast as Louis could spend it. Colbert was at
once Chancellor of the Exchequer, Minister of Agriculture, Director
of the Board of Trade, Chief Lord of the Admiralty, Home Secre-
tary and Colonial Secretary. It was in this last capacity that he
had special connection with New France.
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 53
launched, equipped, and set sail. Tonty re-
joined La Salle on board the Griffon at Detroit.
He has an interest for us to-day in that his
name is preserved to us in the Tontine plan of
insurance, which was the invention of his father,
a Neapolitan nobleman. And in a greater
sense this Henry Tonty was a nobleman, for
through all his wandering and discouragements
La Salle found in him a sincere and trustworthy
friend. At Mackinac they were to meet with
advance guards of traders sent on by La Salle,
but most of them had deserted. Gathering up
a few who he thought would be loyal, La Salle
made his way to the Illinois River, where a fort
was built and a boat begun by Tonty for explora-
tion of the great river. The Griffon was sent
home from Green Bay, loaded with furs, and
there our knowledge of her ends.
In the meantime La Salle determined to
return to Fort Frontenac to get more material
and more men to undertake the great journey.
By canoe and on foot they crossed Southern
Michigan and passed over the Detroit on a raft,
thence on foot along the shores of Lake Erie (in
the month of March), and utterly worn out he,
his faithful hunter, and two white companions,
reached the Falls, only to hear heart-breaking
news. He had travelled more than a thousand
54 LA SALLE AND GREATER NEW FRANCE
miles in 65 days in the very worst season of the
year. There was no news of his ship — his fortune
and his hope.
Deceived and even robbed by his men, in
addition to all his other disappointments, La
Salle, undaunted and undismayed, sent Dautray,
one of the white men who had accompanied
him, with four others, to reinforce Tonty, and
pushed on to Fort Frontenac. As if he had not
already enough bad news, just as he arrived at
the Fort, messengers from Tonty told him that
the men who were building the vessel in the
Illinois River had stolen what they could and
had deserted. These precious rascals, joined
by other deserters, must have been following
close behind the messengers, as we hear of them
breaking into La Salle’s storehouse on the
Niagara, looting everything they could and
setting out for the East. La Salle heard of it,
intercepted some of them, killed two, and took
the rest prisoners to Fort Frontenac.
But Tonty must be rescued and the explora-
tion go on, so La Salle gathered men and supplies
and started for the West. With twelve men
he went up the Humber River, crossed to Lake
Simcoe, and thence down the Severn River to
the Georgian Bay ; the others with the heavier
freight went by Niagara and Lake Erie. They
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 55
were to meet at Mackinac, but La Salle could
not wait, and hastened on with a foreboding
that something awful may have happened to
Tonty at his Fort Crevecoeur (broken heart)
in the Illinois country.
And when they arrived it was to see where
once had been the chief town of the Illinois,
nothing but ashes, skulls, and mangled corpses.
The Iroquois had been there. Down the river
he went looking for Tonty, even into the Mis-
sissippi. Discouraged, they turned back to the
St. Joseph River and there at Fort Miami,
where La Forest was in charge, they settled
down for the winter. In the meantime, Tonty,
after trying in vain to prevent the battle between
the Iroquois and the Illinois, had escaped and
after weeks of suffering had reached Green Bay.
La Salle in the spring set out for Fort Fron-
tenac to refit and went by Michillimackinac.
We can imagine his joy when he found Tonty,
who accompanied him to the East. By October
they had arranged their affairs and arrived at
Fort Miami in November. Here they organized
their expedition of 18 Indians and 23 French-
men, and in Christmas week, 1681, they set out.
Across Lake Michigan to the Chicago River,
thence portaging to the north branch of the Illinois,
they entered the Mississippi on February 6th,
56 LA SALLE AND GREATER NEW FRANCE
but saw no human beings until March 13th,
near the mouth of the Arkansas River. Landing
there La Salle raised the banner of France,
planted a cross, and took possession of the
country in the name of the King.
Thence down the river they went for three
hundred miles to the Taensas Indians, who
lived in large square houses built of mud and
straw with a high roof of cane and surrounding
a large open court. Soon they came to the
mouth or delta of the Mississippi, and going in
different parties down the channels they joined
together on an island at the mouth, erected a
column, and took possession of all Louisiana
from the mouth of the Ohio to the Gulf of
Mexico. And so from Lake Erie west and
north to the Rocky Mountains and the Canadian
North West, and south from Lake Erie to the
Gulf, and west to the Rio Grande was added to
the New France whose capital was at the nar-
rowing of the stream of the mighty St. Lawrence.
La Salle had realized his dream, and against
obstacles which would have staggered any
ordinary man ; and New France now extended
from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of
Mexico. They retraced their way up the Mis-
sissippi and after a long illness he reached
Mackinac, whither he had sent Tonty to
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 57
announce their success. It was too late to go
to Quebec, and there was a rumour that the
Iroquois were on the warpath, so La Salle and
Tonty returned to the Illinois and spent the
winter of 1682-3 in fortifying Starved Rock,
which was to be one of the chain of forts to hold
the new country.
But in the meantime Frontenac was recalled,
the forward policy entirely changed, and La
Salle’s own possessions at Fort Frontenac seized.
This seemed the cap stone of all his troubles,
and he passed eastward in the fall of 1683,
reached Quebec in November, and finding his
case hopeless, sailed for France to lay his case
personally before his King.
He was a wonderful man. His vessels had
been wrecked, his goods lost, his possessions
confiscated. He had been deserted by his men,
been robbed, and yet he retained that faith in
himself and in his cause, and so impressed the
King that he was given command of an expedi-
tion to sail for the mouths of the Mississippi to
drive the Spaniards out of North America.
They landed somewhere near where Galveston,
Texas, now stands, having missed the Mis-
sissippi. Again through wrecks and desertion
La Salle found his numbers depleted. Added
to this, dreadful sickness broke out. La Salle
58 LA SALLE AND GREATER NEW FRANCE
determined to seek a way out to the Mississippi
and thence up to New France. He made
repeated attempts, and at last, deserted by
nearly all his men who despaired of ever seeing
home again, he was shot by one of his own fol-
lowers on March 18th, 1687.
Thus perished one of the most remarkable
men in our history, the first great Imperialist,
who had an empire in his brain, and who if he
had been given backing would have made a
New France greater than Old France could
ever hope to be. And the map of North
America would have been greatly changed !
Tonty, the faithful friend and companion of
La Salle, stayed for some years in the country
of the Illinois, joined Iberville in Louisiana in
1702, and died near where Mobile now stands
about 1704. Faithful, not only to the erratic
La Salle, but also to the Home Government, he
received no recompense in any form, but has
left for us an undying picture of how true and
faithful a friend can be, and under the most
trying circumstances.
CHAPTER V.
RADISSON AND THE GREAT NORTH WEST.
“If he had not had his faults, if he had not been as
impulsive, as daring, as reckless, as inconstant, as
improvident of the morrow as a savage or a child, he
would not have accomplished the exploration of half
a continent. Men who weigh consequences are not of
the stuff to win empires. He went ahead and when the
way did not open he went around, or crawled over, or
carved his way through.
“Memorial tablets commemorate other discoverers.
Radisson needs none. The Great Northwest is his
monument for all time.”
— Agnes C. Laut.
Radisson and the Great North West
Before Joliet, Marquette, and La Salle had
made their memorable expeditions in search of
the Western Sea, a man unattached to any
religious order, and under the protection of no
government, had traversed these unknown wilds
for the sheer joy of exploration and excitement.
The hair-breadth escapes of the hero of modern
fiction cannot compare in thrills with the mar-
vellous adventures of this man to whom the
country from Quebec to the prairies of the great
59
" ' V\7* *
60 RADISSON AND GREAT NORTH WEST
North West was alike his hunting and his
playground.
This was Pierre Radisson, who left his
native St. Malo about a century after the great
Cartier, and settled at Three Rivers, which
then was a comparatively large place, having a
population of about 200 souls.
With the enthusiasm and recklessness of
youth he disregarded the warnings of his friends
and went duck shooting with a couple of equally
reckless and youthful companions. They were
but boys and were at the age when Indians had
no terrors for them. Separated in the chase,
Radisson had splendid luck, and returning to
where they had agreed to meet, he found his
two companions dead among the rushes. When
he looked about, the heads of Indians appeared
everywhere. They set upon him, and after a
game struggle he was disarmed, stripped, tied
around the waist with a rope and brought to
the camp fire.
The very recklessness of the youth compelled
the admiration of the Indians, who spared his
life, gave h m his clothes, dressed his hair and
daubed his face as of an Indian brave. Though
but a boy he showed the coolness in the face of
danger which was to characterize him through-
out his adventurous life. We are told that he
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 61
slept that night between two warriors under a
common blanket and so soundly that he was
with difficulty awakened at the break of day.
Taking no chances, they tied him to the
cross bar of a canoe when the party set off for
the Indian village many miles distant. On the
fourth day he was released from the cross bar,
and being given a paddle, entered with zest
into the work of helping onward the canoe.
He was a cheerful lad, and the Indians, instead
of allowing him to work himself out in his
awkward manner, taught him how to give the
light feather strokes of the true canoe man.
He, in turn, took his share of the burdens, and
was always eager to help. Their village was
near Lake George in what is now New York
State, and there they prepared to make merry
with their captives and their plunder. He had
to run the gauntlet of the braves, and was so
successful that he was sought for adoption by
a captive Huron squaw who had been adopted
by the tribe. She pleaded for his life before the
Great Council and was allowed to take him as
her son. He was now a Mohawk of the Iroquois
nation.
Ever on the watch for an opportunity, he and
an Algonquin captive soon made their escape,
after killing three of the Mohawks ; and after
62 RADISSON AND GREAT NORTH WEST
wandering many days, they were within sight
of Three Rivers when the Iroquois overtook
them, killed the Algonquin, and Radisson was
again a prisoner. He was recognized and sub-
jected to tortures, his thumb being thrust into
a pipe of live coals, and the soles of both feet
burned. Still worse was in store for him, but
his adopted father, a chief among them, and his
adopted mother purchased his freedom by a
recital of their own deeds of valour and by gifts
of wampum.
This seventeen year old lad seemingly had
won the hearts of all. He accompanied them
on their expeditions and visited the lodges of
the Oneidas, Onondagas, Senecas, and Cayugas
in their wanderings about what is now known
as the Niagara district. Indeed, he won the
confidence of his Mohawk friends to such an
extent that they took him with them when they
visited the white man’s village of Orange
(Albany), and he justified their confidence by
returning with them, even though the Dutch
offered to pay a great ransom to free him.
He wanted to make himself free and was
ever on the alert for the suitable moment. It
came in 1653, and alone he made his way back
to Orange after many hair-breadth escapes.
Here he was befriended — indeed he seemed
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 63
always and everywhere to make friends — by a
Jesuit priest who gave him enough money to
enable him to sail down the Hudson to New
York, whence he took boat for Amsterdam,
which he reached in 1654, and thence he made
his way home to France.
This adventure I have dwelt upon in some
detail, because it is an illustration in miniature
of his eventful life. One would think there had
been enough crowded into these months to
suffice for a life time, but the lure of the West
was upon him, and his relatives, like himself,
had gone overseas.
Therefore he joined the fishing fleet that was
sailing for the Banks of Newfoundland, and
made his way back to Three Rivers in May of
1654, just two years after he had disappeared.
His sister, Marguerite, had lost her husband
in a fight with the Mohawks, and had married
Chouart, a famous fur trader. This man was a
widower, his wife having been a daughter of
Abraham Martin, whose farm near Quebec City
was in another century to become famous as
the scene of the battle of the Plains of Abraham.
These two men, Radisson and Chouart,
became not only fast friends, but inseparable
companions in a life of adventure. The traders
coming East to dispose of their furs told of a
64 RADISSON AND GREAT NORTH WEST
great country beyond the Great Lakes, and
these two lovers of the wild set off up the Ottawa
across Lake Huron and Michigan, over what is
now Wisconsin, and came to a “mighty river,
great, rushing, profound, and comparable to the
St. Lawrence.” This undoubtedly was the
Upper Mississippi, and these two white men
were the first to see it and the “farflung, fence-
less prairie, where the quick cloud-shadows
trail,” which make up what we call the Great
North West.
The Indians told them of a great river to
the south which divided itself in two, the
Forked River, the junction of Missouri and Mis-
sissippi, but the adventurers decided to make
their way back again, and crossing through
what is now Nebraska, North Dakota, and
Minnesota, they came to Lake Superior and
the Sault. Here the Crees told Radisson of a
great sea to the north, Hudsons Bay, where
there were quantities of furs. So alluring was
the description that he set off on snow shoes,
but the season was too late and he returned
and made his way east. At the rapids of the
Long Sault his large party came upon the
Iroquois who had massacred Dollard and his
noble band of Frenchmen. These they put to
flight and as deliverers they made a triumph-
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 65
ant journey to Montreal, Three Rivers and
Quebec.
Their one thought was when could they
resume their explorations in the North, and as
they could not come to terms with the Governor,
who wanted all the profits without assuming
any of the risks, they stole away and in October
reached Lake Superior. Pressing on they came
to where Duluth now stands, and there they
established a fur trading post, the first between
the Missouri River and the North Pole. This
marks the opening of the Great West as truly
as when the railway passing through unknown
portions of our Great West established a station
as a centre of influence and trade.
In the spring they set off with their hosts
of the winter, the Crees, to find the Great Sea,
and it is possible that they were successful,- but
after great hardships. We know, however, that
they returned in 1663 with costly furs, and
instead of the welcome which might reasonably
be looked for, they were heavily fined by the
Trench governor for trading without a license,
and most of their furs were confiscated. They
tried to get redress in France, but utterly failed,
and so with no support in either Old France or
New France they sought out new friends and
joined the English in an expedition against
66 RADISSON AND GREAT NORTH WEST
Port Royal. This was unsuccessful, and being
taken prisoners by the Dutch they were landed
in Spain, whence they made their way to
England. This was in 1666, when the great
plague was raging in London, and Charles II.
and his court were at Oxford.
They met at the court a man who was greatly
impressed with their stories, and whose name
was to be intimately associated with the great
Northland. This was Prince Rupert, the dash-
ing cavalry leader of the Stuarts, who became
their patron, outfitted them for exploration,
and they set off for Hudson’s Bay. Chouart
was successful, but Radisson, shipwrecked, re-
turned to England where, in 1670, on the return
of Chouart, a “company of adventurers of Eng-
land trading into Hudson’s Bay” was formed
through the influence of Prince Rupert, who
became the first governor of the Hudson’s
Bay Company, to whom was given an empire.
In the following spring ships were sent out,
posts established, and so successful was their
venture that the French not only sent expedi-
tions and exploring parties northward, but the
great gathering of the Indian tribes at the
Sault Ste. Marie, which Perrot organized, was
to strengthen the French against the English
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 67
traders who were trying to divert trade from
the posts of the French.
But negotiations in England fell through
and Radisson made more satisfactory terms
with his old allies, the French, and sailed under
that flag to Hudson’s Bay, outwitted both the
officials of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the
free traders from New England and France
became supreme in the Bay. But again the
government of New France threw away the
prize, for when Radisson and Chouart arrived
at Montreal they were prosecuted for trading
without a license. They were summoned to
France to explain the circumstances to the
Home Government, but when they arrived they
found that Colbert, the minister who sum-
moned them, was dead. Chouart, thoroughly
discouraged, retired to end his days in quietness,
for the outlook was anything but encouraging.
However, Radisson, looking with eagerness
still for the life of adventure, and having a
family to support, played French against Eng-
lish offers until at last he went across to England
and in 1684 he sailed for Hudson’s Bay under
the flag of the Company. Here he found young
Chouart, the son, who had been holding the Bay
for France, who, when he heard of the treatment
given his father and Radisson, surrendered the
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The Turtle Clan chiefs of the Onondagas are discussing some
important tribal subject within the private bark lodge of their fire-
keeper. The presiding chief must give the decision. The chief
Council of the Turtle Clan.
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 71
fort and the furs to Radisson, who thereupon
gathered the Indian tribes and made a treaty
with them and the Hudson’s Bay Company,
which in essence lasts unto this day. Returning
to England they received a great welcome, and
for five years Radisson made annual visits to
the Bay and the Company flourished.
War between France and England broke out
in 1689 with the accession of William and Mary,
and the Bay was invaded by the French, the fur
trade badly disorganized, and the profits of the
Company greatly decreased.
As is too often the case with corporations,
gratitude for what had been accomplished was
wiped out by the disappointment of the present,
and Radisson, who had done so much for the
company, was ignored ; too old to be of aggres-
sive service to them, he drops out of sight,
and is forgotten except for the record of the
payment of a small pension up to the year 1710.
His was a wonderful life. Impulsive, yet cool-
headed at critical times, daring, reckless and in-
constant, but generous and brave, he was the true
adventurer who, with no thought of himself, braved
danger for the very love of it, and whose memory
is preserved among the Indians as one who was un-
tainted by the vices of the white man, who never
was cruel and who was admired for his sheer bravery.
CHAPTER VI.
MONTCALM AND THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE-
“The history of French America is far more pic-
turesque than the history of British America in the
period of 1608-1754. But the English were doing work
more solid, valuable and permanent than their northern
neighbours. The French took to the lakes, rivers and
forests ; they cultivated the Indians ; their explorers
were intent on discovery, their traders on furs, their
missionaries on souls. The English did not either
take to the woods or cultivate the Indians, they loved
agriculture and trade, state and church, and so clung
to the fields, shops, politics and churches. As a result
while Canada languished, the English states grew up
on the Atlantic plain modelled on the Saxon pattern,
and became populous, rich and strong. At the begin-
ning of the war there were 80,000 white inhabitants in
New France, 1,160,000 in the British colonies.”
— Professor B. A. Hinsdale.
Montcalm and the Fall of New France.
What the gold mines of Mexico and Peru
were to the Spaniards the fur trade of New
France was to the French, and until the furs
arrived in Montreal or Quebec, they could not
be considered safe, for in the Ohio country and
especially at the Niagara portage, and even on
72
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 73
the way to Frontenac, they were liable to attack
from the English and their Indian allies.
To protect this trade the French built a
strong fort at the mouth of the Niagara River,
part of which may be seen to-day in what is
known as Fort Niagara on the American side of
the river. At the head of the portage, above
the Falls, there was a smaller fort called Fort
Little Niagara.
This was the great trading centre, not only
for the district immediately tributary to it, such
as Toronto (at the mouth of what is now called
the Humber River, and which in summer was
very busy) but for all the north-west country
which with the development of Detroit had
increased in wealth and inhabitants. Toronto
was really an outpost of Niagara and was estab-
lished with the great French forward movement
in 1749. It had been officially named Fort
Rouille after the Colonial Minister of the day,
who was also a man of letters, and the head of
the Royal Library. However, this name was
too artificial to survive and the old name for
the bay and river, Toronto, maintained its hold
upon the people.
In 1749 the French determined upon a great
expedition to show their power and assert their
sovereignty over the Ohio country and to warn
74 MONTCALM AND FALL OF NEW FRANCE
off all strangers from trading on French terri-
tory. So in June of that year with 23 canoes
and 250 men they left Lachine, passed through
Niagara in July, and made their triumphal
way through the Ohio country to Detroit, and
thence back to Montreal in November.
The headquarters of the English on the
Lakes was at Oswego. This was the great
rival of Niagara as a trading centre. When the
war had raised the prices in France the French
traders at Niagara raised their prices cor-
respondingly— and even more. The Indians
grumbled and went on to Oswego, where they
could trade with the English to better advan-
tage. The French, feeling that their trade with
the Indians was being endangered urged an
expedition against Oswego, and in 1756 Mont-
calm took the place by storm in the greatest
battle which up to that time had been fought
between the French and the English for control
of the Lakes.
This disaster followed closely upon the
defeat of Braddock at Duquesne, made especially
famous because of the presence of George
Washington, the colonial, as junior officer, who,
accustomed to the Indian manner of fighting,
warned General Braddock, but whose advice
the haughty English general thought beneath
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 75
notice ; and still more was heaped upon the
unfortunate English when Montcalm defeated
them at Ticonderoga. It certainly looked as if
there must needs be a vigorous policy on the
part of the English if they were to have any of
the trade on the great inland waters.
Pitt, the Premier of England, saw this and
made plans for an aggressive campaign. In
1758 Colonel Bradstreet, with American pro-
vincials, captured Fort Frontenac, burned and
sank seven vessels of war, captured sixty cannon
and destroyed the Fort and incidentally the
shipyard, which was the first upon the Great
Lakes. This success greatly heartened the
English and made them think how simple
might be the conquest of other places if they
had ships of war. It was the awakening of the
English to the importance of “sea power” on
the Lakes.
Now Niagara was the centre of French
power and influence, situated on the great
portage which practically controlled the great
trade from the West. The fort had been greatly
strengthened during 1756-7, and the English
carefully gathered a strong force. It was a real
siege, in which the assailing force used trench
warfare to make steady and safe advances.
After nineteen days the garrison surrendered to
76 MONTCALM AND FALL OF NEW FRANCE
Sir William Johnson, who was ranking com-
mander on account of the deaths of the superior
officers during the siege. Sir William had
joined the investing force with 900 Indians, the
largest number ever led into battle by a white
man. When he entered the fort one of the most
interesting of his companions was Joseph Brant,
a Mohawk lad of 17, destined to become one of
the most renowned men of his day. And now
the English for the first time had access to the
great fur trade.
While speaking of this fort it will be of
interest to note that in the common English
speech of that day the pronunciation of the
name of the fort was Niagara. Our present
pronunciation would have been impossible to
the Iroquois tongue, which requires that each
syllable should end in a vowel.
While these disasters were overtaking the
French on the Lakes, the English under Wolfe
had sailed up the St. Lawrence after clearing
the coasts below, and were preparing to attack
Quebec. Indeed the news of the capture of
Niagara, which came at a very opportune
moment, greatly heartened the English and
correspondingly depressed the French.
The situation was perilous. Fort Fron-
tenac was destroyed, Fort Niagara in the hands
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 77
of the English, Amherst was advancing, as part
of Pitt’s plan, through New York State by way
of Oswego, against Montreal, and a strong
English force under Wolfe, selected specially
for this work by Pitt, was before the capital
city of Quebec.
The internal affairs of the country were not
promising. Montcalm, the general of the French
forces, an able military man of good experience,
was not supreme, but had to take his orders
from Vaudreuil, the governor, a weak and
jealous man, failings fatal in a position of
authority. And with almost the powers of the
governor, was the Intendant, a man called
Bigot, to whose looseness in matters of morals
and money may be partially ascribed the loss
of New France. The defects of the rulers were
to be seen in the officials under them, and it was
a difficult task that confronted Montcalm.
The advance against Quebec was made by
water, and up to the battle itself the movements
were those of a fleet. The commander of the
army was General Wolfe, selected by Pitt, the
Prime Minister of England, and to him was
given what was then the extraordinary privilege
of selecting most of his staff and thus providing
for unity of aim and community of interest.
Saunders was Admiral of the fleet.
78 MONTCALM AND FALL OF NEW FRANCE
At first they lay below the city and tried
sundry attacks by land, but without success.
Then they made a skilful movement up the
river and into a better position to make a direct
attack.
Quebec is a natural stronghold, and had to
depend largely upon this for protection. Large
sums of money had been assigned for the greater
development and strengthening of the fortifi-
cations, but in those days of corruption and
thoughtlessness the money had doubtless been
squandered. Its great cliffs might have pre-
sented a hopeless appearance to the enemy if
properly guarded, but Wolfe knew through his
capable Intelligence Department, that there
was but little ammunition and little food in the
garrison. Above all, there was a lack of
intelligence and co-operation among the rulers
of the French, an evidence of which was the
fact that a great fleet could make its way up the
dangerous St. Lawrence with practically no
opposition.
Wolfe studied out the situation and, em-
boldened by the good news from the Lakes,
planned an assault by night. Carefully select-
ing the place, he told no one but the admiral
and the captain who was to lead the great pro-
cession of boats to the assault. Shortly after
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 79
midnight on September 12th, 1759, the boats
in line dropped down the river with Wolfe and
his staff in the leading boat. They passed suc-
cessfully a French sentry who thought they were
a French convoy, and about four o’clock on that
autumn morning Wolfejeaped ashore at a cove
about a mile and a half above the city, and led
his men up the steep path which he had already
carefully investigated. Again they successfully
answered the challenge of a sentry and by six
o’clock the whole landing force was on the
heights.
It was a surprise to the French, but even
then the chance for recovery would have been
greater if Montcalm had not been hampered by
having to consult the governor on all details.
This was a national crisis. Half a continent
was at stake and yet the man whose training
had been for the purpose, whose business it was
to know what to do at such a crisis, had to lay
his plans before a political appointee, who in
turn used his power for the humiliation of the
expert military leader.
But Montcalm was a patriot, and he made
the best of the situation. By nine o’clock the
French marched out in battle array against
Wolfe’s army, which by this time had reached
the level known as the Plains of Abraham. The
80 MONTCALM AND FALL OF NEW FRANCE
armies were almost equal in numbers, approxi-
mately 5,000 each, and as the French advanced
to the attack, which was their best policy,
Wolfe, advancing his men so that the action
would be close, gave the order that no shot was
to be fired until the enemy was within forty
paces. It was a difficult matter to remain
steady and resist the temptation to fire, but
they did, and when at forty paces a volley was
let loose, followed immediately by a second,
the French line wavered and Wolfe gave the
order to charge.
The French could not withstand the shock
and the battle was won. Wolfe, already
wounded, received a death wound in the first
moment of the charge. While being carried to
the rear he heard some one say, “They run,
they run !” Wolfe roused himself and asked,
“Who run ?” “The enemy, sir ! Egad ! they
give way everywhere !” “Then I die happy.”
And so passed away the young intrepid general,
who had recognized fully the great issues
involved in this encounter and on the previous
evening had made a disposition of all his belong-
ings.
And Montcalm, while trying to rally the
fugitives, was stricken down, and when told
that he could not live, replied calmly, “So much
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 81
the better. I am happy not to live to see the
surrender of Quebec.”
The battle lasted until mid-day, and the
result was a triumph for Wolfe’s tactics, for it
was a carefully planned attack, and nothing
was left to chance. Quebec surrendered, the
French troops marched out with the honours of
war, and the reign of France was virtually over
in the New World.
Montcalm was buried in the Ursuline chapel
at Quebec, while Wolfe’s body was carried on
the Royal William to Portsmouth in charge of
Sergeant Donald MacLeod, of the Black Watch,
all his years a soldier and with twelve sons in
the army and navy.
Years afterwards, to these two great generals,
npble and self-sacrificing men, each doing his
duty to his country even to the sacrifice of his
life, a monument was erected in the city for
whose possession they had fought. On one side
is the word Montcalm ; on the other Wolfe ;
and on the pedestal between, these words :
MORTEM VIRTUS COMMUNEM
FAMAM HISTORIA
MONUMENTUM POSTERITAS
DEDIT.
CHAPTER VII.
PONTIAC AND THE LAST HOPE OF INDIAN
SUPREMACY.
“For a mausoleum a city has arisen above the forest
hero ; and the race whom he hated with such burning
rancour trample with unceasing footsteps over his
forgotten grave.”
— Parkman.
Pontiac and the Last Hope of Indian
Supremacy.
We speak sometimes of the victory of Wolfe
on the Plains of Abraham and the subsequent
surrender of Quebec as having involved the
transfer of Canada or New France from the
French to the English. It really was the first
and most important in the series of events which
led to this transfer.
The situation at Quebec presented many
difficulties. England had but a small force,
and had barely defeated the French. It was
the Fall of the year with the cold winter ap-
proaching which proved a terrible time for the
English, unaccustomed to so severe a climate,
82
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 83
and in a city much of which was in ruins.
Unity of purpose and decisive action on the
part of the French might have cut off the
English, but in the dread of being separated
from their base of supplies the French retreated
to Montreal.
Early in the spring Chevalier de Levis,
second in command to Montcalm, gathered an
army in Montreal of 7,000 men and reached
Quebec in April. Murray, the English com-
mander, marched out to the attack, but was
badly defeated and retreated into the city.
And now the fate of New France was in the
balance. Quebec was not in condition to stand
a siege. The English forces had met with a
decided reverse. The French were heartened
by the victory, but were not strong enough to
follow it up vigorously. Word was received
that ships were coming up the river. Were
they French or English ? It was an anxious
moment, and when at last the English flag was
seen floating at the masthead the French fell
back upon Montreal and the fate of New France
was practically settled.
Against Montreal Murray led the forces
from Quebec, expecting there to make con-
nections with Amherst, who was on his way
from New York by way of Oswego and the St.
84 PONTIAC AND INDIAN SUPREMACY
Lawrence. The junction of forces was so well
managed that Vaudreuil surrendered, and was
able to make excellent terms with his generous
conquerors.
And so from Louisbourg to Quebec, to
Montreal, to Frontenac (taken by Bradstreet)
to Niagara (taken by Sir William Johnson) New
France was in the possession of the English.
But New France extended far beyond
Niagara, and the forts at Pitt (where Pittsburg
now stands) Detroit, Michillimackinac, Sault
Ste. Marie, and the strongly fortified Fort
Chartres near the present city of St. Louis, had
heard nothing of the happenings in the Far
East ; and in this connection it must be remem-
bered that all the Indians except the Iroquois
were allies of the French or friendly disposed
towards them, and none but an Englishman of
that day could have imagined, as Amherst did,
that the Indians were hardly worth considering
and that the fighting was now over.
These outposts of the French were to be
formally taken over and Major Robert Rogers,
of Rogers’ Rangers, was despatched to Detroit.
He sent a messenger ahead to acquaint the
commander with what had taken place at
Montreal, so to give him time to consider the
question of surrendering the fort.
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 85
When nearing Detroit Major Rogers was
stopped by Pontiac, an Indian chief of the
Ottawa nation, who demanded of him by what
right he was entering upon the territory of the
Ottawas and allied tribes. He was given a
friendly answer ; they smoked the pipe of peace
and seemingly parted good friends ; but the
English made no further efforts to conciliate
him by presents or friendly overtures. In
other words, they were not diplomatic in their
dealings, and the Indians resented the lack of
tact and consideration shown them, the original
inhabitants of the country.
There is nothing which so hurts a sensitive
man or a sensitive nation as contempt, and
Pontiac, gathering about him a great council of
the Indians of that region, spoke in an impas-
sioned and eloquent manner of this oppor-
tunity, perhaps the last, to drive out the white
man.
Pontiac was the Napoleon of the Indian
tribes of New France. He was not only coura-
geous in battle but he was a genius in the art of
war and was eloquent in council, with a power
of winning others to his cause. It is said that
he was in command of the Indians on the occa-
sion of Braddock’s famous defeat at Fort
Duquesne, made especially noteworthy because
but the religious, social and civil organization yet remained and was
more slowly disintegrated. The false face ceremony is one of the
more spectacular rites common among all the Iroquois.
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WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 89
of the presence of George Washington on
Braddock’s staff. At any rate it is known that
Pontiac had been the guest of Montcalm at
Quebec, certainly a tribute to his greatness,
and that he proudly wore a uniform presented
to him by that general.
This, then, was the man who in 1763 as-
sembled a council near Detroit, at which were
present Ottawas, Chippewas, Pottawatomies,
Miamis, Sacs, Foxes, Menominees, Wyandots,
Mississagas, Shawnees and Delawares, repre-
senting nearly 2,000 warriors, and told them
that he had received a wampum belt from their
father, the King of France, who commanded
his red children to fight the English.
When Major Rogers reached Detroit the
city at once surrendered and Rogers planned
to go to Mackinac, but it was too late in the
year and he had to return to New York.
In the spring Pontiac laid out his great plan
of campaign by which Detroit was to be the
first fort to be assailed. Having obtained per-
mission to hold a peace dance at Detroit, his
braves had carefully spied out the fort, and
after consultation with him fifty warriors were
selected who were to saw off their gun barrels,
so that the weapons might be hidden under the
blankets, and in this fashion were to ask for a
90 PONTIAC AND INDIAN SUPREMACY
parley with the English commander. For-
tunately for the garrison, the commander was
informed of these plans by a spy, and when
Pontiac and his fifty followers entered the fort
they were surprised to see the warlike prepara-
tions. With a bland innocence which often
had served him well, Pontiac asked why so
many of the young men were in the streets with
guns. “Just for exercise and discipline,” said
the equally bland commander, and asked Pon-
tiac to state his case. Just as the Indian was
about to present the wampum belt in the
reverse way — which was to be the signal for
the massacre — the commander made a sign, the
war drums of the garrison crashed out a charge
and Pontiac saw that he was detected. He
then presented it in the usual way and the
English commander told him that as long as
they behaved they would be taken care of and
peace would be maintained. He then ap-
proached Pontiac, pulled open his blanket and
disclosed the short rifle concealed beneath.
There was nothing for Pontiac to do but retire,
which he did with his fifty braves.
This was really the beginning of the contest
and Detroit was in a state of siege. The fort
was in the midst of what was a military colony
extending from twelve to sixteen miles along
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 91
the west bank of the river. It had been founded
in 1701 by Cadillac, who was virtually a feudal
lord, owning the fort, the church, the gristmill,
the brewery, warehouses, barn and the very
fruit trees themselves, which had been brought
from France. Cadillac was a remarkable or-
ganizer, and against great difficulties and severe
opposition from forts already established, he
had been able to persuade the French Govern-
ment to support him in the development of this
colony.
Indeed, this is one of the earliest instances
in Canada of assisted immigration and sub-
sidies to settlers, such as we are accustomed to
think of as belonging to modern times. In 1748
the French Government offered any settler
who would go to Detroit one spade, one axe,
one plough, one large and one small wagon, a
cow, and a pig. Seed would be given to be
returned after the third harvest. The women
and children were supported for one year after
coming to the colony. In this way Detroit
had come to be a place of about 2,500 people.
The plan now was to starve out the garrison
by killing all the settlers outside the fort who
were in any way sympathetic with the English
cause. At the same time they waylaid all
relief expeditions sent from the East, and at
92 PONTIAC AND INDIAN SUPREMACY
first were very fortunate, as the English officers
did not understand the Indian method of war-
fare and were easily led into ambuscades. For
five months this little garrison had been sur-
rounded by a thousand or more savages, but
notwithstanding various successes the Indians
were becoming tired.
Siege warfare long continued was not con-
genial to them, and little by little they began to
desert until by October there were only the
Ottawas, his own tribe, left. When, therefore,
at the end of that month the French governor
at Fort Chartres sent a message to Pontiac that
the Great Father in France had given up all his
possessions over here to the English, the great
chief raised the siege in disgust and left for the
south. There he hoped to rally the Indians
for a final stand, but when he found it could not
be done he reluctantly made terms of peace
with the representative of Sir William Johnson
at Detroit in August of 1764. On that occasion
he spoke in the Peace Council as follows :
“Father, we have all smoked out of this
pipe of peace. It is your children’s pipe ; and
as the war is over and the Great Spirit and
Giver of Light who has made all the earth and
everything therein has brought us all together
this day for our mutual good, I declare to all
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 93
nations that I have settled my peace with you
before I came here, and now deliver my pipe to
be sent to Sir William Johnson that he may
know I have made peace and taken the King
of England for my father in the presence of all
the nations now assembled ; and whenever
any of these nations go to visit him they may
smoke out of it with him in peace. Fathers, we
are obliged to you for lighting up our old council
fire for us and desiring us to return to it, but we
are now settled on the Miami river not far from
hence. Whenever you want us you will find
us there.”
In 1766 Pontiac visited Sir William Johnson
at his castle on the Mohawk and smoked the
pipe of peace with that great warrior. Thence
he went south to Fort Chartres, the last place
in New France where floated the lilies of France,
that flag which for over two centuries had been
the symbol of sovereignty from the Gulf of St.
Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. There he
became embroiled in a quarrel and was killed
by one of the Illinois in a cowardly manner, an
act for which that tribe had to pay dearly in
the vengeance exacted by the friends of the
great old chief.
But this story would hardly be complete if
we did not point out that Pontiac’s plot for the
surprise of Detroit was not a merely local
94 PONTIAC AND INDIAN SUPREMACY
attack, but was part of a comprehensive plan
for the surprise of all the forts held by the
English against which, as far as possible, a
simultaneous attack was to be made so that it
would be difficult for the English to help the
garrisons and impossible for the forts to help
one another.
The most striking of these attacks was that
on Fort Michillimackinac. On June 4th the
English garrison planned to celebrate the anni-
versary of the birthday of George III. Games
were to be held on the plain outside the fort
and the Chippewas and Sacs asked that they
be allowed to take part and give the garrison
the pleasure of seeing the great Indian national
game of lacrosse played by experts. This was
granted and a great crowd gathered.
The game was well played and so warmly
contested that the excitement was intense.
Player pursued player, tripping and slashing
in true Indian fashion. When the game was
at its height a player threw the ball at a point
near the gate of the fort. There was a wild
rush for the ball, and when they reached the
gate lacrosse sticks were thrown aside, and the
closely blanketed squaws who were there in
large numbers opened their blankets and threw
out tomahawks and knives to the braves.
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 95
Madly they rushed in, took possession of the
fort, fell upon the garrison and the traders,
butchered some and carried off the others as
prisoners.
Smaller trading posts were taken in like
fashion by cunning or by direct attack when
cunning failed, and for a short time it looked as
if the English would have a difficult task to
capture and hold the Mississippi Valley. But
the rebellion ceased with the fall of the genius
who had conceived fit, the last great Indian
chief of New France.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GRAY GOWNS AND THE BLACK.
“My boatmen sit apart,
Wolf-eyed, wolf-sinewed, stiller than the trees.
Help me, O Lord, for very slow of heart
And hard of faith are these.
Cruel are they, yet Thy children. Foul are they,
Yet wert Thou born to save them utterly.
Then make me as I pray,
Just to their hates, kind to their sorrows, wise
After their speech, and strong before their free
Indomitable eyes.”
Marjorie Pickthaee.
The Gray Gowns and the Black.
When Champlain on his return from New
France to his native village of Brouage told of
the vast country which lay beyond the seas,
with its thousands of inhabitants who knew
nothing of Christianity, the priests of the
monastery in that village were so impressed with
the magnitude of the work and the necessity
for having Christianity presented to these
heathen and savages, that four volunteered to
accompany him to New France. They reached
96
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 97
Quebec in May, 1615. They were Franciscans
of the Recollet Order, and were distinguished
in dress by the gray robe girt with the white
cord. Hence they are often referred to as the
priests of the Gray Gown.
The most prominent of these was Le Caron,
who joined a band of Hurons returning after a
successful sale of their winter’s hunting. Their
route was up the Ottawa, Lake Nipissing and
French River to Lake Huron. This was a
memorable trip in many ways, but especially
because Le Caron was the first white man to
see what we now call Lake Huron — indeed the
first of the Great Lakes to be discovered by a
white man — or to sail upon its waters. Down
among the islands of what is now Georgian Bay
they went until they came near where Pene-
tanguishene now stands, and at a large Huron
village he awaited the coming of Champlain.
On the 12 th August Le Caron celebrated
mass and held the first religious service in all
this territory, which afterwards was known as
Upper Canada. Three hundred years after-
wards this event was remembered by mass
being celebrated as nearly as known on the
same spot, and a monument erected.
Champlain and he spent most of the winter
with the Hurons and made visits to their
98 THE GRAY GOWNS AND THE BLACK
neighbours, the Petuns, or Tobacco Indians,
along the south shore of Nottawasaga Bay, and
at the foot of the Blue Hills near where the
town of Collingwood now stands.
After returning to Quebec to consult with
the other members of the Order who had come
out to reinforce the small number of mis-
sionaries, Le Caron in 1623 returned to his
Hurons with Father Viel and Brother Sagard.
To the industry of the latter we owe a dic-
tionary of the Huron language.
They laboured on with zeal but without
making much lasting impression and they
realized that the field was too large and the
priests were too few. The Recollets had been
in New France for about ten years and had
founded missions in Acadia in the east, Huronia
in the west, Nipissing and Upper St. John.
They now realized that the Order was not
equipped with the machinery or organization
necessary to deal with so great a problem and
in their despair they sent a deputation to the
Jesuits in France to state the problem and ask
their aid.
The invitation to come to their help was
accepted by the Jesuits and in 1625 three of
these priests of the “Black Gown” landed at
Quebec. They were met by the Recollets, who
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 99
became their hosts and took care of them until
the work of organizing the mission could be
undertaken. Two of these were Brebeuf and
Lalemant, the former of whom set off for Huronia
but turned back when he heard of the death of
the Gray Robe, Father Viel, who was on his
way from Huronia to Quebec. He was drowned
in what is known as the Riviere des Prairies
near Montreal, where the rapids are known to
this day as the Sault au Recollet — The Recollet
Rapids.
Champlain granted to the Jesuits land for
their headquarters, where they might build
their mission, and establish their farm in con-
nection therewith, for they were practical men.
Indeed, so firmly did they believe in having a
definite investment in the country in which
they were labouring that by the end of the
French rule in this country the Jesuits were the
largest land owners in New France. In planning
their missionary labours Brebeuf was assigned
to Huronia, the field which for nearly twenty-
three years was to be his home.
When Quebec was taken by Kirke four years
afterwards, the priests with the other official
inhabitants were taken away as prisoners, and
when the country was restored to France and
the conduct of affairs given over to the Company
100 THE GRAY GOWNS AND THE BLACK
of 100 Associates, the Recollets were not allowed
to return. The excuse was that one Order was
all that could be supported by the Company,
and the Jesuits were the better organized.
Thus passed away the Brethren of the Gray
Robes except in some isolated cases in later
days, when as in 1669, under the Intendant
Talon, some few returned.
And now commences the romantic story of
the Jesuits, the priests of the Black Robe, to
whose mission journals called “Relations,” we
owe most of our information of the early history
of our country. From 1632 to 1673 there
appeared annually in Paris a volume called a
Relation, in which the work of the Jesuits in
New France for the twelve months was described
and reports from the missionaries incorporated
or quoted.
These were very popular for they were
interesting, romantic, full of information that
was new and strange, and often were the means
of stimulating wealthy people to help the cause
of evangelisation ; in some cases impelling
persons to offer themselves as helpers in the
great work, and still others to come out to this
great land for the sheer adventure.
All the work of the Jesuits was charac-
terized by the spirit of self-sacrifice on the part
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 101
of the individual and by the efficiency of ma-
chinery. This is noticeable in the Relation or
Annual Report published each year and which
in form and method furnishes even to-day a
model for the annual report of great institutions.
Another aspect of their efficiency is seen in the
way in which they prepared their missionaries
for the task before them. There was a training
period of two years during which the Jesuit
studied the languages of the tribes among whom
he was likely to live and became accustomed to
the methods of living and the customs of the
new country.
A striking illustration of the wordly wisdom
of the superior officers of the Order is found in a
circular issued to the missionaries who were to
go up with the Indians to Huronia :
“You should love the Indians like brothers
with whom you are to spend the rest of your
life. Never make them wait for you when
embarking. Take a flint and steel to light
their pipes and kindle their fires at night ; for
these little services win their hearts. Try to
eat their sagamite, as they cook it, — bad and
dirty as it is. Fasten up the skirts of your
cassock that you may not carry water or sand
into the canoe. Wear no shoes or stockings in
the canoe, but you may put them on in crossing
the portages. Do not make yourself trouble-
102 THE GRAY GOWNS AND THE BLACK
some even to a single Indian. Do not ask them
too many questions. Bear their faults in
silence and appear always cheerful. Buy fish
for them from the tribes you will pass ; and
for this purpose take with you some awls, beads,
knives, and fish hooks. Be not ceremonious
with the Indians ; take at once what they offer
you. Ceremony offends them. Be very care-
ful when in the canoe that the brim of your
hat does not annoy them. Perhaps it would be
better to wear your night cap. There is no
such thing as impropriety among Indians.
Remember it is Christ and His cross that you
are seeking ; and if you aim at anything else
you will get nothing but affliction for body
and mind.”
There were some, of course, who had not the
gift of learning languages. These returned to
France or were employed in the missions in the
white settlements. It was from such training
and with the motto of the Order animating
every thought and action they went forth :
“Ad majorem Dei gloriam,” — for the greater
glory of God.
Naturally, the first great mission was to the
Hurons, who had been the firm friends of the
French, and who had been introduced to Chris-
tianity already by the Recollets ; and who,
moreover, lived in permanent settlements, and
cultivated their fields. So the Jesuits followed
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 103
the trail of Le Caron and for nearly a quarter
of a century Brebeuf and his companions
worked faithfully in Huronia, that part of what
is now known as the province of Ontario called
the county of Simcoe and bordering upon the
Georgian Bay. His brother priest in this great
missionary enterprise was Lalemant. Head-
quarters with a school were now established in a
well-planned fort, which they built on the
eastern bank of the Wye and from which mis-
sionaries were sent out to some twelve stations
in Huronia, and among the neighbouring tribes.
This was really a model settlement for the
Hurons, who could see fields of corn, beans,
pumpkins and wheat, with pigs and cattle out-
side, and shops of useful trades inside where
were the men at the forge, the shoe shop, the
laundry and the carpenter shop.
The Hurons, however, were ignorant and
superstitious and the medicine men took advan-
tage of epidemics of sickness, which arose from
the unsanitary living, to blame the missionaries,
who indeed must have been men of infinite
patience and unselfish devotion to their work.
And now just when it seemed as if they
might see some result of their long and unselfish
labour the Iroquois began to make raids upon
this northern country. There were constant
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Among the Iroquois the cultivation of maize, beans, squashes and
other garden produce was extensive and furnished a large portion of
their food supply. The women of each village were organized in
The Corn Harvest.
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 107
encounters on the trading journeys to Quebec,
but in 1642 a great Huron village near where
the town of Orillia now stands was wiped out
by a marauding party of Iroquois. And yet
the Hurons would not take seriously the warn-
ings of their missionaries and made no prepara-
tions against their unrelenting enemies.
Watching for the departure of the great
canoe fleet to Quebec in 1648, the Iroquois made
a sudden attack on Huronia and Father Daniel
and his village of St. Joseph were slaughtered.
Next spring they returned, put St. Ignace to
the sword, took the village of St. Louis and
stripped and bound to stakes the Fathers
Brebeuf and Lalemant. The tortures to which
these good men were put before they were killed
can hardly be imagined and cannot be described,
all of which they stood with amazing fortitude.
Indeed, even the Indians, stolid as they were,
could not help admiring the courage of these
martyrs for they drank , the blood of Brebeuf
that they might be as brave as he.
The spirit of these men can be understood
in the description given us by Marjorie Pick-
thall, one of our own poets, of Father Lalemant,
on a missionary journey :
“My hour of rest is done ;
On the smooth ripple lifts the long canoe ;
108 THE GRAY GOWNS AND THE BLACK
The hemlocks murmur sadly as the sun
Slants his dim arrows through.
Whither I go I know not, nor the way,
Dark with strange passions, vexed with heathen
charms,
Holding I know not what of life or death ;
Only be Thou beside me day by day,
Thy rod my guide and comfort, underneath
Thy everlasting arms.”
And so the Iroquois went through Huronia
burning and scalping until there was only a
mass of ruins, and the remnant of the Hurons
fled to St. Joseph, on Christian Island, in
Georgian Bay. Here they built a fort, but soon
realized that in such an isolated position they
could be starved out. Part of the nation went
to Quebec, where they were protected and
given some land, and part went to Michilli-
mackinac, and thence to Lake Superior, where
Father Marquette found them. Driven out by
fear of the Sioux they returned to Mackinac,
and thence some of them settled near Detroit,
where under the name of Wyandots, they took
part in the rising against the English known as
Pontiac’s war, just after the capture of Quebec
by Wolfe.
This story of Huronia has been told in some
detail because it illustrates the work of the men
of the Black Robe who shrank from no sacrifice,
who knew no fear, and for whom there could be
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 109
no earthly reward. Huronia was the greatest
of the missions of the Jesuits, for there were
twenty-five members of the Order working
among these people.
But there were other missions. That among
the fickle and warlike Iroquois, with Jogues
and Le Moyne, that at Ville Marie (Montreal),
afterwards given over to Sulpicians, who to this
day are an extremely powerful Order in this
great city, and that at Sault Ste. Marie, where
Allouez, Dablon and Marquette had a mission
which exercised a powerful influence southwards
to Michillimackinac and the country of the
Illinois, and westwards to where Fort William,
Duluth, and even Winnipeg, now stand. It
was from this mission that Joliet, the Govern-
ment official, and Marquette, the Black Robe,
set out on their journey to discover the great
Southern Sea, and which resulted in the dis-
covery of the Mississippi.
And so from Nova Scotia to the southern
Mississippi and northwards to Hudsons Bay,
wherever there were Indian settlements of im-
portance there were Black Robes ministering
to the wandering tribes, teaching methods of
greater production and less waste in the more
settled places, and everywhere endeavouring
to show the benefits of law, order, and settled
110 THE GRAY GOWNS AND THE BLACK
government. There were seven churches or
missions of the Jesuits in New France — Acadia
(Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Cape
Breton); Tadoussac (lower St. Lawrence and
Saguenay) ; Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers
as one ; Huronia ; to the Iroquois ; the Ottawa
or Sault Ste. Marie (Ojibways, Beaver, Crees,
Ottawas, Menominies, Pottawatomies, Sacs,
Foxes, Winnebagoes, Miamis, Illinois and
refugee Hurons), Louisiana.
What they have left to us is not material
wealth, but something infinitely greater, the
record of self devotion, self sacrifice, fearless
zeal and unflinching bravery even to a lingering
death in a cause which they put above all
renown.
CHAPTER IX.
THE IROQUOIS AND THE HURONS
“Stripped to the waist, his copper-colored skin
Red from the smouldering heat of hate within,
Lean as a wolf in winter, fierce of mood —
As all wild things that hunt for foes, or food —
War paint adorning breast and thigh and face,
Armed with the ancient weapons of his race,
A slender ashen bow, deer sinew string,
And flint-tipped arrow each with poisoned tongue, —
Thus does the Red man stalk to death his foe,
And sighting him strings silently his bow,
Takes his unerring aim, and straight and true
The arrow cuts in flight the forest through,
A flint which never made for mark and missed,
And finds the heart of his antagonist.
Thus has he warred and won since time began,
Thus does the Indian bring to earth his man.”
From the poem, "The Archer,” by the late Pauline Johnson,
of the Mohawk tribe of the Iroquois.
The Iroquois and the Hurons.
When Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence
nearly four hundred years ago the Indians
whom he met were of the Algonquin nation,
one of the four great divisions of Indians east of
the Rocky Mountains in North America. The
111
112 THE IROQUOIS AND THE HURONS
others were the Iroquois, the Maskoki or
Southern, and the Siouan of the West.
The Algonquin country extended from Ten-
nessee to Hudson’s Bay and from the Atlantic
to the Mississippi, and included the Delawares,
Miamis, Ojibways, Ottawas, Sacs, Foxes, Pot-
tawatomies, and Illinois. They lived in wig-
wams covered with bark or skins and were a
warlike nation, subsisting on hunting and fishing.
There were probably 100,000 in number when
at the height of their prosperity.
The Iroquois occupied the territory now
known as Pennsylvania, New York, the south
shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario; and on
the Upper St. Lawrence. They were known as
the Five Nations, the Mohawks, Oneidas,
Ononadagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, to which
were added in 1715 the Tuscaroras, who came
north from Carolina and whose speech even to
this day differs much from the other Iroquois
tongue. These made up what we know so
well as the Six Nations. They never num-
bered more than 40,000, but they were mobile
and made forays from their towns in New
York, sweeping over the country like a
scourge and returning to their villages for
feasting. A Jesuit, describing the raids of
the Iroquois, said “ They approach like
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 113
foxes, they attack like tigers, disappear like
birds.”
Algonquin was the general name for the
tribes enumerated, but there was no bond of
union except a likeness of language, while, on
the other hand, the tribes of the Iroquois were
in a real confederacy, which enabled them to
join together against a common enemy. It was
this power of organized and sustained warfare
that made them so formidable. Even as early
as the time of the coming of the white man they
had reached a comparatively high stage of
social development and government, so that
they lived in villages, and the Long House or
community dwelling in which many families
lived under one roof, indeed in one room, was
being displaced by the separate hut. In the
centre of the village was the Council House,
the place of meeting, of ceremonials and of
trade, just as the Town Hall and Market are
to-day in many a town.
We are given an interesting picture of the
Council in a Mohawk village in New York :
“Sixty old men sat on a circle of mats
smoking around the central fire. Before them
stood the captives After passing the
Council pipe from hand to hand in solemn
silence, the Sachems prepared to give their
views. One arose, and offering the smoke of
114 THE IROQUOIS AND THE HURONS
incense to the four winds of heaven, to invoke
witness to the justice of the trial, gave his
opinion on the matter of life and death. Each
of the chiefs in succession spoke. Without any
warning whatever one chief rose and toma-
hawked three of the captives. That had been
the sentence. The rest were driven to lifelong
slavery.”
When the palisaded or stockaded village life
was abandoned for the freer, more independent
life of the great village, the location was gener-
ally upon the banks of a stream so that there
might be a plentiful supply of water, and in
many cases easier transportation. While not
an agricultural people they had always enough
women and captives to provide the means of
living, for the warriors and the hunters return-
ing with game. Fields of corn, pumpkins, and
squashes, orchards of plum and apple, and
small herds of hogs and cattle were to be found
in these villages ; for the handling of the fruit
and water, baskets and pots were made with
great skill by the women.
The Iroquois were great travellers, and a
thousand mile journey was little to them if the
object to be attained seemed worth while.
They were intelligent in the making of trails so
as to get the shortest and easiest route, an
illustration of which may be seen to-day in the
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 115
fact that the New York Central Railway from
Lake Erie to the Hudson River follows an
Iroquois trail.
Their principal ceremonies were in honour
of the season, the Maple Sugar Festival at the
going of the snows of winter, and the Green
Corn Dance, and the Harvest Home Festival
of the autumn.
The legend of Hiawatha, the most popular
of all poems relating to Indian life, was told
by Longfellow as if Hiawatha were an Ojibway,
whereas it is likely that the story in its original
form was from the Ononadaga nation of the
Iroquois, and Hiawatha is the very wise man
who formed a plan of universal peace among the
nations of the Iroquois. However, it may have
been because the Iroquois and the Ojibways
were very friendly up to the middle of the
seventeenth century, when the Ojibways sympa-
thized with the Hurons whom the Iroquois had
driven from Huronia on the Georgian Bay.
They afterwards made peace and became as
brothers. So much so indeed that when many,
many years afterward the Mississagas, a band
of the Ojibways, were forced to give up their
reserved lands on the River Credit, near Toronto,
the Iroquois on the Grand River Reservation
took them in and gave them a tract of valuable
116 THE IROQUOIS AND THE HURONS
land. Longfellow took many phases of the
legend and grouped them so as to give the
atmosphere of Indian life and interpret the
meaning of its ceremonies. The leading thought
in all the legends is :
“How he prayed and how he fasted,
How he lived, and toiled, and suffered,
That the tribes of men might prosper,
That he might advance his people!”
This is the great legend of the Indians of
New France told in every winter lodge, and told
in a somewhat different form among different
tribes. It gets local colour from the traditions
of the particular tribe.
How they became the unrelenting enemy of
the French we are told in the story of Cham-
plain, who joined the Hurons and Algonquins
in 1609, when they were on an expedition
against the Iroquois, who lived near Lake
Champlain. It was in that battle the Iroquois
first saw and experienced the effect of the death
dealing musket of the white man, and they
never forgot that it was used against them by
the French.
Each nation was divided into tribes or clans
with names such as Wolf, Bear, or Turtle, and
as the same tribes were in all the nations, the
section in each nation was related to the cor-
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 117
responding section in all the other nations.
So the Seneca Turtle was a brother to the
Mohawk Turtle. The families belonging to the
Turtles were the most respected and were
accorded the highest honours.
Kach of the nations had its own government
for local affairs and elected sachems to sit in the
Great Council of all the Nations, where fifty
sachems dealt with national affairs. It is not
too much to say that the Iroquois were the most
intelligent of the Indians of New France, for
they were always ready, well organized, and
watchful, and knew how to take defeat. When
pressed back by the French and village after
village was destroyed by a great expedition
organized to punish them severely, they retired
in good order, and when things had calmed
down they returned, rebuilt their villages, re-
planted their fields and planned revenge.
The Hurons are said to have been relatives
of the Iroquois, but if so they must in some
earlier time have ceased to be even friendly, for
we find them allied with the Algonquin, and
from the time of Champlain on the side of the
French in the great international conflict. They
lived on the shores of the Georgian Bay of
Lake Huron, in what is called now the County
of Simcoe. This district was known as Huronia,
118 THE IROQUOIS AND THE HURONS
and at the height of their power there were
about 30,000 inhabitants, almost as many as
live in the corresponding district to-day. They
traded with the French at Quebec by sending
each year a fleet of canoes up the Bay and by
the French River, Lake Nipissing and the
Ottawa River to the St. Lawrence. This was
the route by which Le Caron and Champlain
entered this great northern country in 1615,
and were the first white men to see the Great
Lake, afterwards called Huron, the first of the
Great Lakes to be discovered by the French.
The route by the Great Lakes was unknown, and
indeed all that southern country was dangerous
because of the presence of the dreaded Iroquois.
They were more of an agricultural nation
than were the Iroquois. Possibly they were
not better farmers, but they were poorer war-
riors and so remained on the land more than
their fighting relations. They raised pumpkins,
sunflowers and rye. The corn they planted in
hills higher, larger, and much further apart than
we do to-day.
They lived in villages in the Long Houses or
community dwellings which were to be found
among the Iroquois in their early days. These
were built by bending saplings and tying them
together to form the frame, which they sheathed
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 119
with bark. Down the centre were the fires,
each of which was shared generally by two
families. The smoke was supposed to go out
by a hole in the roof. On either side of the fire
and stretching from end to end were platforms
on which the families slept, while underneath
were the stores of clothing and provisions. No
wonder the dogs, dirt and disease impressed
the missionaries to these people, and made them
plan for huts rather than a share in these dwel-
lings.
Some of the greater villages were palisaded
for protection, but the smaller ones were not
permanent, being moved about at the will of
the people or because of the unsanitary con-
dition of the land that had been occupied. The
villages became large when the necessity for
protection became greater and some had as
many as 2,000 inhabitants. The favourite site
for a village was on high ground near springs or
an inland lake, so that there would be a good
water supply. There was a village Council or
Assembly, which dealt with local matters and a
tribal assembly for matters of general importance
but there was no union for offence and defence
well organized and ready for action, as among
the Iroquois.
The Hurons were smaller in stature than the
120 THE IROQUOIS AND THE HURONS
Iroquois, the largest men being about five feet
eight inches in height. They had their feast
days, which resembled those of other nations in
being associated with the seasons, but their
custom of burying the dead has a somewhat
marked character. The body was wrapped and
placed on a platform away from marauding
animals and every ten years or thereabouts
there was a great Feast and Dance for the Dead,
when, after preparing a great pit, the bodies
were placed in it sometimes in rows, sometimes
in circles and sometimes in parcels of bones of
those who had been long dead.
Into the pit were cast pottery, implements
of warfare and kettles which were first rendered
useless so that the graves might not be dese-
crated. This is in contrast to some other
nations of Indians who bury with the deceased
the things which they think will be useful to
him in the “happy hunting ground” to which
he has gone. This pit is called an Ossuary, and
to the excavation of these we owe much of our
knowledge of this nation. This communal
burial with the Hurons corresponded to the
communal life which preceded the era of the
individual burial and the individual wigwam.
This Huronia county enjoyed great pros-
perity during the first half of the seventeenth
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 121
century with constantly increasing immigration,
growing villages, better implements for increased
comfort in living, great production and skill in
handicraft owing to the influence and example
of the Jesuit mission. Into this peaceful
country, unprepared for war, there came in the
last decade of this first half of the century the
Iroquois much as the Assyrian, “like the wolf
on the fold.” In a series of well planned,
vigorous attacks the Hurons were massacred or
driven out of the country, the villages burned,
the Jesuit missionaries slaughtered in the fight,
or reserved for a death by torture.
First on one of the Christian Islands off the
shore they built a fort, but soon realized that
the important question of food supply could not
be met as long as the Iroquois remained on the
mainland and intercepted all messengers. Part
of the nation then set off for Quebec, and there
threw themselves upon the kindness of their
friends, the French, who gave them a grant of
land and their protection. Others went north
to Michillimackinac, and in their fear went even
well up into Lake Superior, where they were
ministered unto by Father Marquette. But
they were not long there until the warlike Sioux
became so great a menace that with their
protector, the great Marquette, they went back
home among his own folk is social in habits and full of humor. To
the stranger he appears taciturn and diffident and oftentimes indolent.
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IROQUOIS INDUSTRIES
Typical Iroquois Industries.
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 125
again to Michillimackinac. Afterwards many
of them went still further south and under the
name of Wyandottes they settled near Sarnia
and Windsor, opposite the present city of
Detroit.
These are typical nations of Indians of the
days of New France, the crafty, strong, nomadic,
warlike and well organized Iroquois on whom
the missionaries could make little or no impres-
sion, the allies of the English and the most
feared of all the nations ; and the less intelli-
gent and more domesticated, the traders and
the canoemen, the hunter and fisher, the un-
organized Hurons, who suffered the mis-
sionaries to settle among them and pretended
to be converted because it did not interfere with
their comfort but rather increased it — the allies
of the French, with little initiative and no
cohesion.
CHAPTER X.
THE COUREUR DES BOIS AND THE VOYAGEUR.
“I have passed the warden cities at the Eastern water-
gate,
Where the hero and the martyr laid the corner-
stone of State,
The habitant, coureurs-des-bois, and hardy voyageur,
Where lives a breed more strong at need to venture
or endure.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Coureur des Bois and the Voyageur.
An island just where the Ottawa River joins
the St. Lawrence always suggests to me in its
name a Frenchman who, in the days following
Champlain, penetrated beyond the Mer Douce
(Lake Huron) and was one of the first white
men to sail on Lake Superior. This was Perrot,*
who, like Etienne Brule with Champlain, was
known as a coureur des bois, a runner of the
woods, a trader, a guide, a hunter, a woodsman.
Without him and his companion, the voyageur,
* As a matter of hiscory the island is called after another Perrot
much less distinguished
126
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 127
the efforts of priest and noble alike to penetrate
the great forests would have been all in vain.
They followed the trails of the deer and other
wild animals who were the ancient roadmakers,
and took advantage of all the waterways in their
light canoes. These journeys were not only
full of danger, but were attended by much
hardship. In one of the journals of a mis-
sionary priest from Quebec to the Huron
Indians who lived on the south-eastern shore of
Georgian Bay, we read :
“Of two difficulties regularly met with, the
first is of rapids and portages for these abound
in every river throughout these regions. When
a person approaches such cataracts, or rapids,
he has to step ashore and carry on his back
through forests or over high, vexatious rocks
not only his baggage, but also the canoe. This
is not accomplished without much labour, for
there are portages of one, two, and three leagues,
each of them requiring several journeys if one
has ever so small a number of packages. At
some places where the rapids are not less swift
than at the portages, but of easier access, the
Indians, plunging into the water, drag their
canoes and conduct them with their hands with
utmost difficulty and danger for sometimes
they are up to their necks in the current, so that
they have to let go their hold upon their canoes
and save themselves as best they can from the
128 THE COUREUR DES BOIS AND VOYAGEUR
rapidity of the water that snatches the canoe
out of their hands and carries it off. I have
computed the number of portages and find that
we carried thirty-five times and dragged at
least fifty times. The second ordinary difficulty
is that of food. A person is often obliged to
fast, especially if he happens to lose the places
where he stored away provisions on his down-
river course. (Note. — The familiar word to
this day for such a hidden store is “cache/’)
Even when he finds them his appetite remains
none the less keen for having regaled himself
with their contents, for the usual repast is only
a little corn broken between two stones, and
sometimes simply taken in fresh water, which
is insipid food. Sometimes he has fish, but
this is mere chance unless he happens to pass
some tribe from whom he can buy it. Add to
this that a person must sleep upon the bare
ground, perhaps on a hard rock.”
Such was the experience of the missionary,
new and hard and very real to him, whom the
voyageurs carried on his apostolic way. But
the coureurs and the voyageurs were traders
and explorers and, as one might infer, they
were always young men and in the prime of
life, because of the hardship they had to endure
in making their long hazardous journeys through
trackless forests. Father Tailhan gives a
graphic description of their life. He says :
“As all Canada is only one vast forest with-
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 129
out any roads they could not travel by land ;
they make their journeys on the rivers and the
lakes in canoes that ordinarily contain each
three men. These canoes are made of sheets
of birch-bark smoothly stretched over very
light and slender ribs of cedar wood. They are
divided into six or seven or eight sections by
light wooden bars, which strengthen and hold
together the sides of the canoe As an
entire canoe cannot be made with a single sheet
of bark the pieces which compose it are sewed
together with the roots of the spruce tree, which
are more flexible and white than the osier, and
these seams are coated with a gum which the
savages obtain from the spruce The
savages, and especially their women, excel in
the art of making these canoes, but few French-
men excel in it The coureurs des bois
themselves propel their canoes with small
paddles of hard wood, very light and smooth ;
the man at the rear of the canoe guides it,
which is the part of their calling which requires
skill. The two other men paddle ahead. A
canoe properly manned can make more than
fifteen leagues a day in still water When
they meet rapids or waterfalls which cannot be
passed they go ashore and unload the bales. . . .
These, as well as the canoe, are carried on their
backs and shoulders until they have passed the
falls or rapids and find the river suitable for
again embarking on it ; and this is called
‘making portages.’ .... In such a canoe these
130 THE COUREUR DES BOIS AND VOYAGEUR
three men embark at Quebec or Montreal to go
three hundred, four hundred, and even five
hundred leagues from the colony to procure
beaver skins among savages, whom very often
they have never seen.”
As the fur trade was supposed to be a
monopoly controlled by the King of France and
granted by him to a Trading Company, many
of these coureurs were in the service of the
company on a commission basis, but there were
others who took the risk of disposing of their
furs to a greater advantage, and so were known
as “free traders.” If one were to make any
distinction between the coureurs and the voya-
geurs he would speak of the former as the
hunters and the latter as those who transported
the furs by water, but in general there was not
a distinct difference except in large trading
companies where the work was highly organized.
They were picturesque in their dress and
fond of striking colours. A bright cotton shirt,
cloth trousers, leather leggings, deer skin moc-
casins and a small scarlet cloak or capot made
up their attire with a wide worsted belt with
flowing ends (such as we see worn with the
blanket suit of the snowshoers of to-day) a stout
knife and a tobacco pouch. Cheerful, careless,
heedless of danger and fond of adventure the
hardy descendants of the Breton or Norman
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 131
fishermen sang their chansons, keeping time
with their paddles, the quickened notes for the
dangerous places, the slower for the easy
passage across the placid lake.
One of the greatest of all these coureurs des
bois and voyageurs was Nicholas Perrot who, at
the age of sixteen, was the companion of the
missionary priests on their journeys from Quebec
to the Indian tribes, and thus gained for himself
not only experience in woodcraft and knowledge
of the country, but what was still more important
he developed his natural aptitude for languages
by close study of the Indian dialects, and thus
made himself valuable, not only to himself but
to his country. Many other coureurs had had
similar opportunities but did not improve these
opportunities and so remained mere coureurs
des bois, and average ones at that, until the
end of their days.
This ambitious youth soon became an inde-
pendent trader, but without the selfishness that
was usually attached to that name. He was a
man of some education and certainly of vision.
He saw clearly that it was to the interests of
New France that there should be united feeling
and action among Indians and French against
their common enemy, the Iroquois, and this was
ever in his mind in the negotiations which at vari-
132 THE COUREUR DES BOIS AND VOYAGEUR
ous times took him to the tribes of theChippewas,
the Foxes, the Hurons, the Dakotas, the Iowans,
the Mascoutens, the Miamis, the Pottawatomies
and the Sioux, as well as the Iroquois.
To him was entrusted by the governor the
arrangement and management of the great
gathering of the Indian tribes at Sault Ste.
Marie where, on the fourteenth of June, 1671,
the tribes for a hundred leagues were gathered
in a great council that the Deputy Governor
might formally take possession of that country
in the name of the King of France. In a spec-
tacular manner — that it might impress the
Indians by its grandeur — a cross was erected
and the arms of France were raised on a great
pole and Perrot, doubtless in a loud voice,
acting as herald and interpreting to the Indians,
proclaimed three times over that “in the name
of the Most High, Most Powerful, and Most
Redoubtable Monarch, Louis XIV. of name,,
most Christian King of France and Navarre,
we take possession of said place Ste. Marie du
Sault, as also of Lake Huron and Superior, the
island of Manitoulin, and of all the lands,
rivers, lakes and streams contiguous to and
adjacent here as well, discovered as to be dis-
covered, which are bounded on the one side by
the seas of the North and on the other side by
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 133
the seas of the South in its whole length and
breadth/’ — and at the end of each time of read-
ing the proclamation he took up a sod of earth
calling out “Vive le Roi,” which was repeated
in a great shout by all the people. The demon-
stration was intended to offset the influence of
Radisson and Chouart, who, at Hudsons Bay
in the service of the English, were drawing the
trade of the Indians beyond Lake Superior.
Perrot was especially useful to Frontenac,
the next great governor after Champlain, in that
he acted as ambassador to the ever-restless
tribes and maintained harmony and peace. He
seems to have been a welcome man in every
Indian village, and was the best informed man
of his time in regard to the affairs of New France.
He was in command at Green Bay and over the
Mississippi Valley country in the winter of
1685-6, when he discovered the lead mines. In
1699 the King of France closed many of the
western posts and Perrot retired and wrote his
memoirs, which have proved of such great
value to us in giving us knowledge of our own
country during the latter half of the seventeenth
century. He was a brave, loyal, and devoted
man who gave much of his life to the public
service and who deserves to be remembered
among the heroes of New France.
CHAPTER XI.
THE SEIGNIOR AND THE HABITANT.
“The original tillers of the soil in Lower Canada,
who first assumed the title of ‘Habitants’ while holding
their land under feudal tenure, would not accept any
designation such as ‘censitaire’ which carried with
it some sense of the servile status of the feudal vassal
in Old France, but preferred to be called a Habitant or
inhabitant of the country — a free man and not a vassal.”
— Sir Lomer Gouin.
The Seignior and the Habitant.
The colony of New England was planted by
men who protested against the kind of govern-
ment under which they had lived and it was to
be expected that customs of government in their
new home would differ materially from those
under which they had suffered. On the other
hand the colony of New France was essentially
a part of France subsidized and supported by
the Government of that country. Hence we
can understand how the customs of govern-
ment of New France in practically all respects
would be like the customs at home.
It is hardly worth while to speak of govern-
134
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 135
ment or social life in New France until after
the restoration of Quebec and the return of
Champlain in 1633. Valued at home merely
as a possible revenue producer through the fur
trade, the Home Government gave over the
general direction of the affairs of New France
into the hands of a company known generally as
the Company of One Hundred Associates. In
return for fulfilling certain obligations this
Company was to have exclusive control of the
fur trade and have power to govern, create trade,
grant lands and bestow titles of nobility. The
chief obligation laid upon it was to furnish to
the colony each year at least two hundred
settlers and give them support until they should
get a fair start. In this way the Home Govern-
ment thought the country would gradually
have a number of people on the land who could
be looked upon as permanent settlers in contrast
to the wandering hunters and traders.
This method of governing a colony by means
of a chartered company was not unique. India
was governed by the East India Company for
many years, Java by a Dutch trading company,
and the incident of the Jameson Raid illustrated
some aspects of the great Company of South
Africa.
To further encourage settlement the Govern
136 THE SEIGNIOR AND THE HABITANT
ment recognized the title of seignior given to
the man who, taking up a fair amount of land,
undertook to settle persons upon it, live upon it
himself, and thus develop an estate. In return
for this social and political distinction he en-
gaged to serve his country with his men about
him in time of need. In other words, the idea
of it was an adaptation of the feudal system of
holding lands in return for national service.
This system was more or less in operation
for over a quarter of a century, but the company
was so intent on making money out of the fur
trade that they neglected their obligations in re-
gard to settlement on their land, and there were
less than 2,000 people and not more than 4,000
acres of cultivated land in this great country.
When this state of affairs was brought to the
attention of King Louis XIV., who was genuinely
interested in the colony, he cancelled the charter
of the company, and in 1663 New France was
made a crown colony under a governor who
represented the dignity and military power of
the Crown, an Intendant, who was something
more than a Minister of the Crown and less than
a Governor, and who looked after the details of
government, and the Bishop who as head of the
church shared the problems of government in
this triumvirate.
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 137
While much depended upon the Governor,
much more to help or hinder progress was in the
power of the Intendant, and the colony was very
fortunate in the earliest years in having such a
capable man as Talon, just as we shall find she
was equally unfortunate in the last years in
having Bigot, corrupt, and without conscience.
It is interesting to notice that the two holders
of this office who are of such prominence as to
be remembered in anything other than name,
were the first and the last, to the one the colony
owing much of the stability of government, to
the latter much that led to the loss to France of
her greatest colony.
Talon was the real organizer of the seig-
niorial system and was perhaps the most capable
man who ever administered the affairs of the
colony. On his own farm on the St. Charles
River he gave this country the first scientific
farming, rude as it was in that early time, and
this was the first of the model farms which we
think of as comparatively modern institutions.
He encouraged ship-building at Quebec by
actually building ships ; he distributed looms
in the farmhouses that the settler might be
independent in the matter of clothing, a very
important matter in a country with such a
climate ; and he built a tannery that the pre-
138 THE SEIGNIOR AND THE HABITANT
cious commodity of leather might be available
for protection of men and equipment of beast.
Under the Intendant in the actual working
out of the Government came the seigniors, and
hence the real social and political life of the
colony. True, it was before the governor in the
Chateau St. Louis in Quebec, seated upon the
throne under the clustered white flags stamped
with the golden lilies of France, the seignior
appeared and on bended knee presented his
homage and oath of allegiance, but it was with
the Intendant that he transacted his business,
and it was the report of the Intendant to the
King of France which the neglectful seignior
had cause to fear.
The Home Government at once undertook
to help emigration and the Council of New
France gave seigniories with a lavish and not
always discriminating hand. During this cen-
tury of royal rule there were about three hundred
seigniories granted. In size these differed greatly
but practically nothing could be called by that
name which had not at least a dozen square
miles. This land the seignior was expected to
have surveyed into farms and to place settlers
upon them.
As the St. Lawrence was the roadway of
the colony and the means of communication,
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 139
the seigniories were granted first along its shores
and the farms were as close to the river as
possible. The shape of a farm was that of a
parallelogram with the short end fronting the
river. Usually this frontage was nearly a
quarter of a mile, and the depth from about a
half to three miles with an orchard, meadow,
grain and woods. So for purposes of protection,
as well as access to fish and water supply, the
shores of the St. Lawrence showed a row of
whitewashed cottages in contact with the high-
way, even as it does to-day.
This brought about a very interesting land
problem, for when the habitant died, his pro-
perty, according to the French law known as
Custom of Paris, was divided into equal parts
among his children. Each of these was anxious
to have a part of the river front, so that soon
some farms were divided into ribbons of per-
haps fifty to sixty feet frontage. The habitant
each year paid a small fee in money to his
seignior and brought him some of the produce
of the farm. It was generally on St. Martin’s
Day in November and they gathered at the
seigniory for a genuine harvest home with
games and feasting.
The seignior’s house, or the manor house,
as it was often called, was the centre of his
140 THE SEIGNIOR AND THE HABITANT
estate. It was generally built of stone, with
four rooms and an attic. Behind the house
was a great store room and root house. Nearby
was the bake-oven built of stones, mortar and
earth, into which the wood was thrust until the
oven was heated sufficiently, when the ashes
were pulled out and the bread pans inserted.
Even to this day in some parts of the Province
of Quebec one may see the bake-oven near the
roadway and sometimes upon its roof the brown
crusted loaves put out to cool. Sometimes
there was an oven common to the village, so
that even the idea of communal cooking, about
which we hear so much these days, is a reversion
to early practices in our country. Somewhere
near was the grist mill to which all habitants
must bring their grain to be ground, and of
which the seignior took every fourteenth bushel
as his pay.
The habitant’s house followed the general
plan of that of the seignior, long and narrow
with projecting eaves and high peaked dormer
windows, whitewashed each year, a red roof,
and among the green trees it is decidedly pic-
turesque even to this day. There were but few
windows as glass was a rarity. The cooking as
well as heating was by the open fireplace. The
habitant was, and in some respects still is, a
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 141
very independent person, for the family wove
its own cloth, made its own shoes and the
knitted toque of many colours, and grew its own
tobacco, besides the general produce of the
farm. Happy and contented in disposition,
fond of music, especially that of the ballad and
the dance, they enjoyed the long winter even-
ings.
The other great man of the seigniory was the
cure, or priest, for generally the parish and the
seigniory had the same boundaries. The church
was near the seignior’s manor house and often
in the early days the cure and the seignior lived
together. It was supported by a tax by which
each habitant brought to the cure one-twenty-
sixth of the grain he raised. In every way the
church was the centre of the community life.
In it all children were baptised, all marriages
performed, and all burial services held. It was
the source of all information on secular, as well
as religious affairs, and the cure was the general
counsellor of the parish as the seignior was the
judge. Matters of local or national importance
which could not be discussed in the church were
explained after mass in front of the church, a
custom which prevails to this day.
The seigniory was sometimes held, not by
one man, but by a church corporation such as
142 THE SEIGNIOR AND THE HABITANT
the Order of the Jesuits, the Franciscans, or
the Sulpicians. This reminds us of the feudal
days in England when the Abbey was often as
powerful a part of the man power of the army
as was the Castle.
There were but two seigniories granted out-
side of what is known as the Province of Quebec.
One of these was that given to La Salle at
Frontenac (Kingston) and one granted to
Repentigny at Sault Ste. Marie, both French
settlements of importance. Cadillac, who
founded Detroit, asked to be granted one on
Lake Erie along the banks of the Grand River,
and to have conferred upon him the title of Mar-
quis, but he was unsuccessful in both requests.
CHAPTER XII.
STORIES WHICH ILLUSTRATE REFERENCES
IN THIS BOOK
The Liee and Spirit of Oed England and Old
France during these Two Centuries,
as Told in Story Form :
OLD ENGLAND :
Strang, Herbert
With Drake on the Spanish Main.
(Frowde : Bobbs, Merrill.)*
Barnes, James
“Drake and His Yeoman : a true account of the
Character and Adventures of Sir Francis Drake as
told by Sir Matthew Maunsell, his friend and
follower.”
(Macmillan.)
Bullen, Frank T.
“Sea Puritans : ” the romance of the life of Admiral
Blake.
(Hodder.)
Hayens, Herbert
“For Rupert and the King.”
(S.P.C.K.)
McChesney, Dora G.
“Rupert, by the Grace of God.”
(Macmillan.)
Kingsley, Charles
“Westward Ho ! or Voyages and Adventures of
Sir Ay mas Leigh.”
(Dent, Everyman.)
*Where possible the name of the publisher in England is given
first, in America second.
143
144 STORIES ILLUSTRATING REFERENCES
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan
“Micah Clarke : ” a rattling story of fights and
adventures in the time of James II. and the
Monmouth Rebellion (1685).
(Longmans.)
Henty, G. A.
“A Cornet of Horse a tale of Marlborough’s
wars.
(Low : Scribner.)
Stevenson, Robert Louis
“Treasure Island.” The nearest approach to a
book for the youth of every age. Time of
action supposed to be just before the fall of
New France.
(Cassell : Scribners.)
OLD FRANCE :
Dumas, Alexandre
“Marguerite de Valois.”
(Dent : Little, Brown.)
Crockett, S. R.
“The White Plumes of Navarre.”
(R.T.S.: Dodd, Mead.)
James, G. P. R.
“Richelieu : Or a Tale of France.”
(Dent, Everyman.)
Weyman, Stanley
“A Gentleman of France.”
“Under the Red Robe.”
(Longmans.)
(Longmans.)
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 145
Some Stories Which Help to Make the Life of
these Two Hundred Years in Canada more
Vivid and Read :
Altsheler, J. A.
“A Soldier of Manhattan.” Seven Years’ War,
Royal American Regiment of New York, and
Wolfe’s Victory at Quebec.
(Smith Elder : Appleton.)
Aubert de Gaspe, Philippe
“Cameron of Lochiel.” A good account of
French Canadians, translated by C. G. D.
Roberts. (Page.)
Besant, Sir Walter and James Rice
“Le Chien d’Or.” The same legend is in “The
Golden Dog,” by Kirby. It is in “’Twas in
Trafalgar’s Bay ; and other stories.”
(Chatto : Dodd, Mead.)
Brereton, Captain F. S.
“How Canada Was Won : A Tale of Wolfe and
Quebec.” (Blackie : Caldwell)
Browne, G. W.
“With Rogers Rangers.” Seven Years’ War.
(Page.)
Burton, J. E. Bloundelle
“The Hispaniola Plate.” A treasure hunt in the
West Indies by Sir William Phips, afterwards
governor of Massachussetts. (Cassell.)
Can a van, M. J.
“Ben Comee : A Tale of Rogers Rangers.”
Attack on Fort Ticonderoga. (Macmillan.)
Catherwood, Mrs.
“The Romance of Dollard.” Dollard, with his
Hurons repulsing the Iroquois.
(Unwin : Century.)
“The White Islander.” A romance of the old
Indian \yars, (Unwin ; Century.)
146 STORIES ILLUSTRATING REFERENCES
Catherwood, Mrs.
“The Chase of St. Castin.” Seven tales of French
Indian and English in the latter days of New
France. (Houghton.)
“The Story of Tonty.” (McClurg.)
“The Lady of Fort St. John.” A story of Acadia.
Cooper, J. Fenimore (Low : Houghton.)
“The Deer Slayer.”
“The Path Finder.”
“The Last of the Mohicans.”
Famous romances noted for the wonderful
description of forest, lake and prairie.
Craddock, C. E. (Dent' Everyman.)
“A Sceptre of Power.” The struggles of the
French and English in the Mississippi Valley.
CroweEy, Mary C.< (Houghton.)
“A Daughter of New France : With some Account
of the Gallant Sieur Cadillac and his Colony
in Detroit.” Brilliant picture of New France.
t-. „ (Little, Brown.)
Dickson, Harris
“The Black Wolf’s Breed : A Story of France in
the Old World and the New happening in the
Reign of Louis XIV.” Principal scene in
Louisiana, and the main action is the capture
by French and Indians of Pensacola from the
Spaniards. (Methuen : Bobbs, Merrill.)
Doyee, Sir Arthur Conan
“The Refugees : A Tale of Two Continents.”
Of the time of Lousi XIV.
EtUS, E. S. (Longmans : Harper.)
“Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawas : A Tale of the
Siege of Detroit.” (Cassell : Dutton.)
Foote, Mary H.
“The Royal Americans.” Seven Years’ War.
(Houghton.)
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 147
Fox, Alice Wilson
“A Regular Madam.” Two young ladies, one
French, the other English, on their way from
Europe to Quebec during Seven Years’ War.
(Macmillan.)
Gordon, W. J.
“Englishman’s Haven : A Tale of Eouisburg.”
(Warne : Appleton.)
Green, E. Everett
“The Young Pioneers : or with Ea Salle on the
Mississippi.”
(Nelson.)
“French and English.” Ticonderoga to capture
of Quebec by Wolfe.
(Nelson.)
Grosvenor, Johnston
“Strange Stories of the Great River.” Stories of
exploration on the Mississippi by Marquette
and La Salle. (Harper.)
Henham, E. G.
“The Plowshare and the Sword : A Tale of
Empire”. Quebec, New England and Acadia.
(Cassell.)
Haworth, P. L.
“The Path of Glory.” Culminating with Wolfe’s
victory.
(Ham Smith : Little, Brown.)
Henty, G. A.
“With Wolfe in Canada : Or the Winning of a
Continent.” Braddock’s defeat, to Quebec.
(Blackie : Scribner.)
KalER, J. O.
“Boys of 1745 at the Capture of Louisburg.”
(Estes.)
Kirby, William
“The Golden Dog : A Romance of the Days of
Louis Quatorze in Quebec.” Historical ro-
mance rich in local colour.
(Montreal News Co. : Page)
148 STORIES ILLUSTRATING REFERENCES
Laut, Agnes C.
“Heralds of Empire ; Being the Story of one
Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radis-
son in the Northern Fur Trade.”
(Appleton : Ryerson Press)
Lighthall, W. D.
“Master of Life.” An aboriginal romance, the
early scene being at Hochelaga, the great
Indian town visited by Cartier. There are no
white men in the story. Later scenes are laid
in the Mohawk country and the origin of the
League of Nations (five, afterwards six) is
developed in an interesting manner. (Musson)
Machar, Agnes M., and T. G. Marquis.
“Stories of New France.” Seventeen stories of
historical interest. (Lothrop.)
McLennan, William and Jean N. McIlwraith
“The Span o’ Life.” 1745 Rebellion in Scotland ;
Louisbourg and Quebec.
(Harper.)
McPhail, Andrew
“The Vine of Sibmah.” Romance of a Crom-
wellian captain in Restoration times in quest
of a London merchant’s daughter in New
England and New France.
(Macmillan.)
Merwin, Samuel
“The Road to Frontenac.”
(Murray : Doubleday.)
Mott, Lawrence
“Jules of the Great Heart.” In the early days of
the Hudson’s Bay Company.
(Heineman : Century.)
Munroe, Kirk
“At War with Pontiac : A Tale of Redcoat and
Redskin.” (Blackie : Scribner.)
Oxley, J. Macdonald
“Fife and Drum at Louisburg. (Little, Brown.)
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 149
Parker, Sir Gilbert
“The Seats of the Mighty.” The memoirs of
Captain Robert Moray, some time an officer
in the Virginia Regiment, and afterwards of
Amherst’s Regiment. Romance culminating
in battle of Quebec.
(Methuen ; Appleton ; Copp, Clark, Toronto.)
Parker, Sir Gilbert
“The Trail of the Sword.” Romance of struggle
between French and English, d’Iberville being
central figure.
(Methuen : Appleton : Copp, Clark, Toronto.)
Pollard, Eliza F.
“Roger the Ranger : A story of Border Fife
among the Indians.” Fort William Henry, to
capture of Quebec (1759).
(Partridge.)
Parrish, Randall
“A Sword of the Old Frontier : A Tale of Fort
Chartres and Detroit.”
(Putnam : McClurg.)
Roberts, C. G. D.
“The Forge in the Forest.” Acadia in the times
of French and English wars.
(Paul : Page)
“A Sister to Evangeline : The Story of Yvonne
de Famourie.” At the time of the expulsion
of the Acadians.
(Fane : Page)
Roberts, Theodore
“Brothers of Peril.” A story of Old Newfound-
land.
(Nash: Page.)
Richardson, Major John
“ Wacousta : A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy.”
(McClurg : Musson, Toronto.)
150 STORIES ILLUSTRATING REFERENCES
Seawell, Molly E.
“The Virginia Cavalier.”
Washington.
The youth of George
(Harper.)
Smith, Mrs. A. P.
“Montlivet.” He was a chivalrous Frenchman
who rescued the English heroine from the
Indians in the days of Frontenac.
(Constable : Houghton.)
Stevenson, B. E.
“A Soldier of Virginia : A Story of Colonel
Washington and Braddock’s Defeat.” The
defeat by the French at Fort Duquesne.
(Duckworth : Houghton.)
Strang, Herbert, and G. Lawrence
“Roger, the Scout.” England in the ’45 and New
England and New France during French wars.
(Frowde.)
Strang, Herbert
“Rob, the Ranger : A Story of the Fight for
Canada.”
(Frowde : Bobbs, Merrill.)
Thackeray, William Makepeace
“The Virginians.” George Washington appears in
this story.
(Dent, Everyman.)
Tomlinson, E. T.
“A Soldier of the Wilderness.” The fall of Fort
Frontenac.
(Wilde, Boston.)
Van Zile, E. S.
“With Sword and Crucifix.” Adventures of La
Salle.
(Harper.)
Wilson, R. A.
“A Rose of Normandy.” La Salle and Tonty in
Mississippi Valley.
(Little, Brown.)
CHAPTER XIII.
POEMS WHICH ILLUSTRATE REFERENCES
IN THIS BOOK
Note. — The author, title and first lines of the poems
are given, except in the case of “Richelieu.”
Mieeer, Joaquin
coeumbus.
Behind him lay the gray Azores
Behind the Gates of Hercules,
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said, “Now must we pray,
For lo ! the very stars are gone.
Brave admiral, speak, what shall I say ?”
“Why, say ‘Sail on ! sail on ! and on !’ ”
McGee, Hon. Thomas D’Arcy
JACQUES CARTIER.
“In the seaport of Saint Malo, ’twas a smiling morn in
May,
When the Commodore Jacques Cartier to the west-
ward sailed away ;
In the crowded old Cathedral, all the town were on
their knees
For the safe return of kinsmen from the undiscovered
seas ;
And every autumn blast that swept o’er pinnacle and
pier
Filled manly hearts with sorrow, and gentle hearts
with fear.”
Songs of the Great Dominion, edited by W. D.
Lighthall. (Walter Scott.)
151
152 POEMS ILLUSTRATING REFERENCES
Drummond, W. H. The Habitant (Putnam.)
THE WRECK OF THE “ JULIE PLANTE
On wan dark night on Lac St. Pierre
De win’ she blow, blow, blow,
An’ de crew of de wood-scow “Julie Plante,”
Got scar’t an’ run below.
Keats, John
ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN’S HOMER.
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft, of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne :
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold :
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken ;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
EVANGELINE.
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines
and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct
in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on
their bosoms.
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 153
Carman, Buss
CHAMPIyAIN.
“When the sweet summer days
Come to New England, and the south wind plays
Over the forests, and the tall tulip trees
Lift up their chalices
Of delicate orange green
Against the blue serene,” etc.
The Rough Rider and other Poems.
— Mitchell Kennerley
Lytton, Sir Edward Buewer
RICHEUEU.
Adrien de Mauprat, men have called me cruel, —
I am not ; I am just ! I found France rent asunder —
The rich men despots, and the poor, banditti ; —
Sloth in the mart, and schism within the temple ;
Brawls festering to Rebellion ; and weak laws
Rotting away with rust in antique sheaths, —
I have re-created France ; and, from the ashes
Of the old feudal and decrepit carcass,
Civilization on her luminous wings
Soars, phoenix-like to Jove ! — What was my art.
Macaueay, Thomas Babington
the batteE oe ivry (1590)
Now glory to the Lord of Hosts, from whom all glories
are !
And glory to our Sovereign Liege, King Henry of
Navarre !
Now let there be the merry sound of music and of dance,
Through thy corn fields green, and sunny vines,
oh, pleasant land of France !
154 POEMS ILLUSTRATING REFERENCES
Moore, Thomas
CANADIAN BOAT SONG.
Faintly as tolls the evening chime,
Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time,
Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
We’ll sing at St. Ann’s our parting hymn.
Row, brothers, row ! the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near, and the daylight’s past.
Hemans, Feeicia
THE BANDING OF THE PIEGRIM FATHERS
The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods, against a stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed,
And the heavy night hung dark
The hills and waters o’er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.
Browning, R.
herve RIEE
On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety- two,
Did the English fight the French — woe to France !
And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through
the blue, [pursue,
Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks
Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Ranee,
With the English fleet in view.
Pickthaee, Marjorie
pERE eaeemant.
I lift the Lord on high,
Under the murmuring hemlock boughs, and see
The small birds of the forest lingering by
And making melody.
These are mine acolytes and these my choir,
And this mine altar in the cool green shade.
The Drift of Pinions. (Lane.)
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE 155
Sullivan, Alan
brebeuf and lalEmant.
Came Jean Brebeuf from Rennes in Normandy
To preach the written word in Sainte Marie —
The Ajax of the Jesuit enterprise,
Huge, dominant and bold — augustly wise.
Johnson, Pauline
the archer.
Stripped to the waist, his copper coloured skin
Red from the smouldering heat of hate within,
Lean as a wolf in winter, fierce of mood —
As all wild things that hunt for foes, or food.
Flint and Feather (Musson, Toronto.)
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
THE SONG OF HIAWATHA.
Should you ask me whence these stories ?
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest,
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations,
As of thunder in the mountains ?
DATE DUE SLIP
2 ■
FC 305 L81H 1920
LOCKE GEORGE HERBERT 1870-1937
WHEN CANADA WAS NEW FRANCE/
39904907 CURR HIST
FC 305 L814 1920
Locke, George Herbert, 1870-1937.
When Canada was New France /
39904907 CURR HIST
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